Intro Outline

- Your school
- John Finney High School
- What is your proposed project?
- High School partners with trade schools or colleges (maybe education
majors?)
- College/trade school volunteers get grouped with a small group of
students in high school. They will meet weekly and do group bonding
activities, etc. Every week, they will cover a different topic together
(managing finances, college readiness, financial aid, trade school,
english/language support, managing mental health, managing stress, etc.)
- What problem or issue are you trying to address?
- Continuation school is for students who are at risk for not graduating high
school. Why do some students struggle with graduating high school?
According to lots of studies, it could be lack of role models, lack of
knowledge of available resources, lack of time due to family/job..
- For these students, having a role model and mentorship can motivate a
growth mindset, can show these students that they can succeed, and can
make these students happier.
- What is the significance of what you are trying to do? To whom does it matter?
- Our work is significant because it takes a stab at the root cause of the
problems at continuation schools and low-performing schools. For most
students in these schools, the problem is that there might be problems at
home or they don’t think they can succeed, or they don’t have proper
support and encouragement to show that they can succeed. A lot of the
common solutions, like funding, can help in getting the necessary
resources, but don’t target the students’ problems individually. Having
mentors that the students can depend on and interact with one on one
actually helps the mindsets of the students change which is very
important.
- What do you hope to accomplish?
- What is the motivation for this proposal (e.g., ideas, stories, experiences,
interactions, readings)? Tell a compelling story about what led you to
make this proposal.
- We hope to successfully submit a proposal and hopefully even
implement this program at another school.
- The motivation for this idea comes from a personal experience.
One of our group members worked with a virtual education
academy to teach math to students from underserved communities
and during the process was introduced to teachers who worked at
schools with a lot of high-risk (of graduating) students. They said
 that mentorship often helps these students a lot and wanted to do a
mentorship program with UCSB engineering students. We set that
up, and it was a success! However, there were some problems with
that program, sometimes it was hard for students to connect with
their mentors because all communication was through email. So,
we want to model this proposal off of that and make it more
impactful.

Project Description Outline

Describe the following

- Kayan: Provide a clear description of your project along with your justification.
What exactly do you propose doing? What is your overall vision and plan?
A plan to have a group of volunteers/research assistants from colleges nearby the
school (paid for by the grant to have consistent volunteers or college and research credits;
more specifically education majors/minors) that come in a class dedicated to
adulthood-centered things (financial literacy, mental health and self-care, career and
college, language support). There will be catering to incentivize students to attend the
class. Volunteers will mentor in smaller groups (around 3-4) to build connections with the
students and easily answer questions and assign “work” based on the group’s
interests/situations/etc.

- Financial learning: We can help students who have difficulty in university tuition
fees to apply for scholarships and financial aid. Also, teaching students how to
find apartments and school resources.
- Mental health and self-care: Students probably have too much pressure to balance
their lives and study to graduate with a certificate. Since the school already has a
mental health center, our project can offer peer conversations just in case the
students wish to talk to someone just like a close friend who is of their age.
- Stacy: Describe what will be produced from this project that can be
disseminated. (Examples: student products such as journals, DVDs, powerpoint
etc.)
- Journal for our project can be disseminated to UCSB and to other universities.
They might agree with our proposal and actually do it.
- Probably some in-class notes or short weekly summaries about what they have
learned this week and suggestions they have received about their issues from
class. These small writings will be great sources for students to refer to when they
need help in reality in the future. A memo helps memorize all the useful
information just in case the students will forget.

- Describe your plan to implement the project, including timeline and specific
projects.
- Make it a formal course on the student’s schedule (to make sure everyone can
participate)
- once/twice a week, around 1 hour per time
- We don’t want to make it too formal, adding pressure to the students that they will
easily get bored. Instead, we hope we can start the first few classes with some
small games and icebreaker activities or just some casual chitchats to bring close
to the volunteers and students, reinforcing peer communication.
- Then in a more relaxed atmosphere, volunteers can progressively add topics to the
class, ideally one topic per week.
- For example, for the first week, teach students how to manage their
finances, how to pay taxes, and other ideas about financial literacy. Then,
the next week, start a discussion about their future plans: whether directly
step into society, find jobs and raise money to support the family, or
continue their education by attending colleges, or perhaps both at the same
time. For students who wish to pursue their careers as soon as possible,
volunteers can provide suggestions about how to create a proper resume to
find a decent job. As for students who wish to attend college, volunteers
will have more to say about college applications.
- Language learning (English) will probably need one class per week, the
other class in the same week can be about the topics mentioned above.