TC&C Team Memo

November 2020


Team College & Career -


With the arrival of December 1st, we’re launching our first-ever teamwide monthly newsletter! This newsletter is trying to drive at equal parts information-sharing and updates, opportunities for input and feedback, sharing of best practices and incredible work happening across our schools, celebrating and honoring the talent and brilliance of our team, and spreading some joy.


We’ll continue to tweak with the content, formatting, and information shared but in the meantime we hope you enjoy this first addition!


In partnership,

Team College & Career NS

LEADING FOR RACIAL EQUITY

From our time together at ATT in August, there was a strong consensus that our larger team needs and should come together to engage on both the relational and tactical aspects of our core value of Lead For Racial Equity both as human beings in this work and as a part of the specific nature of our collective work of supporting students to and through a post-secondary plan and process.

In order to continue building community and to engage intentionally on both the relational and tactical, we’d like to hold 3 touchpoints over the remainder of this school year to come together to do just that.

That’s where we need and want input. Here’s our current thinking about how we could use the time:

  • Getting to know you activities that are deeper than a basic icebreaker: identity circles, life maps, or sharing more about who we are as human beings because we know that having a baseline of tures

  • Discussion on what and how we could use this time: reading articles about equity about Team College & Career

Send us any or all ideas using this input survey:

  • What could make this stronger?

  • What other topics or ways should we engage as a larger Team College & Career on Leading for Racial Equity?

We’ll be coordinating for the best possible times with each team and will send an invite to hold the time prior to winter break.

CTE/WORKFORCE

The First CTE/Workforce Working Group meeting met on Friday, 11/20 to discuss and decide on preliminary outcomes that the working group could accomplish in the 20-21 school year.

As a reminder to those, who attended, please complete the brief feedback survey by 12/4. Our next meeting will be focused on the feedback and input from the first meeting. The schedule and time will be shared prior to winter break.

For everyone, we are currently keeping all resources to support CTE pathways HERE before Korinne launches our new Team College & Career knowledge management site.

CAREER EXPLORATION

National Career Clusters Framework: represents 16 career clusters and 79 Career Pathways. The clusters can be used to help students discover their interests and their passions, and empower them to choose an educational pathway that can lead to success in college and/or career.

Self-Assessment Tools: You Science and via Characters Strength Survey are two tools to help students increase their self-awareness, make informed decisions, and provide direction for how students can explore and plan for their future careers.

We are currently keeping all resources for career exploration HERE before Korinne launches our new Team College & Career knowledge management site.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

You may have heard the term "knowledge management" thrown around lately. This year, Korinne and TC&C Network Support are setting out to make sure everyone has access to the resources and documents needed to do their best work. Submit your ideas for creating/improving a TC&C knowledge base, and get excited for some big updates in January!

FAMILY ENGAGEMENT & FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT

Team College & Career Network Support’s work around Family Engagement and Financial Empowerment has been well underway since our time together at ATT. Recently, Jasmine launched her work plan to provide support in enhancing the quality of our work in partnerships with students and families.

This school year, she’ll be lending a hand in service of upgrading 3 key touchpoints with families: Verification, Decision Meetings, and College List Meetings.

You can learn more about her work ahead here, but be on the lookout as Jasmine will be connecting with individual school teams throughout the month of December to discuss verification.

TEAM MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

While we can’t be together in person this year and our teams are spread across geographies, we are going to use this space to highlight members of our team and get to know more about each other in life in our work. This month’s highlight is College Success Counselor, Cesar Lombera.

Where are you from? How did you get here? The literal answer would be I am from Los Angeles, CA via Mexican parents and I moved to New York after graduating college for no other reason than it seemed fun. The metaphorical would be I was always interested in education and underserved communities, but didn't necessarily think of it as a career path until I stumbled upon Achievement First. I share a lot of similarities to the students we serve and I like to believe I only made it as far as I have due to a lot of amazing people who supported me along the way and I hope I can play the same role in someone's life.

Favorite aspect of your role? Being at the tail end of so many large milestones gives me opportunity to try and funnel back information in a way that will lead to stronger outcomes for future generations.

One thing people might not know about you? I have an anxiety disorder and my last major anxiety attack came about while I was on a boat sitting next to my very attractive friend. Why would that give me anxiety you ask? Well I get motion sickness and the water was particularly choppy so I kept imagining myself vomiting on said attractive friend ruining all future opportunities, but instead my limbs started cramping and going numb and I jumped off the boat at the next spot and left my friend alone on the boat. In retrospect I should have just vomited on him.

Favorite core value and why? My favorite core value is "Choose Joy" because so many things are out of our control, but how we choose to approach hardship is not.

SHOUT OUTS!

  • DOCCs and CSCs for their vision setting and planning of our first virtual Homecoming!

  • Jamie Boussicot for participating in the Inside Track Coaching Program and earning the highest scores of the cohort during her first observation and feedback session with the coach.

  • Korinne Davis for the invisible and visible work she does to develop more efficient processes and systems for collecting student information and sharing knowledge and resources. Her behind the scenes work allows counselors to focus on the student-facing work and supporting our students to and through college.

*Want to surprise your teammate with a shoutout? Submit all shoutouts here.*

FYIs

While COVID has changed the landscape significantly, IPEDS and the Pell Institute have published their 2020 reports! If you are interested in learning more about the national K-12 and college landscapes from an equity standpoint, these are a great place to start.