How Do We Focus on Freshmen?
Almost every set of state academic standards in English requires students to write a résumé in senior year. English teachers focus a great deal of energy and effort helping students who are nearing graduation construct their résumés using ‘standard’ formatting. While the résumé as a one-page document may someday be extinct (thanks to dozens of online job sites that ask a series of questions which applicants need to answer in essay form rather than submitting a résumé), in the process of answering individual questions asked within online job applications, students simply convert their résumés into many independent essays.
However, the content embedded in the essay answers or in the résumé is what counts. It is the quality and uniqueness of the student’s notable experiences that are far more important than the format which showcases those experiences (one-page document or online questionnaire). In other words, no matter whether an individual applies for a job using a résumé or through an online application questionnaire, he or she will need an actual record of accomplishment to impress an employer.
We have developed the Stormy Wannabees Advantage Initiative for freshmen and sophomores in high schools that are implementing The Internship Depot slate of programs so they can cultivate that record of accomplishment.
Therefore, we have designed our Wannabees program to ensure that high school underclassmen/women are prepared with significant content for their résumé, leaving only the need to learn how to format that content appropriately.
Our offerings for freshmen and sophomores are two-fold. We have developed our own specialized curriculum and related activities to ensure participating students know what they need to do now to achieve success in the future. Each grade level has its own curriculum and activities. Our messages for sophomores build on the messages we give to freshmen.
Check out our Freshmen Wannabees activities in the bulleted list at the bottom of this page. STRMWA
Check Out Our Wannabees curriculum with this link:
Check Out Our Wannabees G.R.I.T. Curriculum.
Links to Other Wannabees Information:
See Our Welcome to High School Underclassmen/women.
Learn How We Secure Sophomore Success.
We Give You What Colleges Want.
See How Our Wannabees Program Fits into Our Sequence of Activities Across Grade Levels.
Click on Each of the Black Boxes Below for More Details:
The Wannabees Design Challenge
Students work in teams to create a fictional company, assign various corporate responsibilities to team members, brainstorm a product concept, ‘build’ a prototype using popular arts and crafts products, create a 60-second video commercial that would be used to ‘sell’ the product, and produce an electronic presentation that details their activities, successes or failures, and define what they have learned from the process.
Participating students have ‘tons-of-fun’ in this competitive team activity as they dream up a unique product working in small teams in person or remotely in the evenings or weekends using their cell phones/emails and free time in school. Participating students engage in a peer review process within teams, which is preceded by a short ‘Language Counts!’ life lesson as part of the activity ‘set-up.’
Students must present their ideas, their entire product proposal (including team expertise), and their 60-second commercial to teachers who select the best and forward them to The Internship Depot volunteer business Mentors who select the final winners.
Winning teams get a small prize.
However, some of the most important work happens after the project is done as students participate in a self-/peer- review process after reviewing information about how businesses use evaluations as a tool that produces improved performance from every employee.
Preview of the College Admissions Process
Participating sophomores can join one of several teleconferences/webinars during which college admissions officials discuss how colleges make their decisions.
We ask these experts to outline what colleges count most, explain what happens when a student is admitted to college but needs remedial courses, what seems to be key behaviors for students who successfully graduate with a degree, and what majors are most likely to lead to in-demand jobs.
We also ask these experts to review the components of the national Common College Application and provide a breakdown of the kinds of answers most colleges expect.
If time permits, there will be an open question sessions during which students on the teleconference can ask a wide-ranging set of questions to the participating college admissions officials.
Strengthen Your Core – On the Starting Block
We start focusing students on building content for their résumés in eighth grade. We don’t have them ‘write’ their résumés, — we ask them to start recording information they will use on their résumés in the future. we ask them to start building content for those documents by recording year-to-year improvement in their academic performance, attendance, and behaviors.
Having started with basic information we presented to them in eighth grade through our proprietary middle school curriculum called The First Rung, we continue to build on that messaging and strongly suggest they continue doing annual self-evaluations starting in ninth grade. This is the first of four ‘Resume Review Activities’ that span every year in high school and is best rooted in English class.
While short, this period of self-evaluation will help them define their core competencies and set goals for improving same. We show freshmen how they can quantify their current and future academic and social performance with data over the course of the next three years to build a better story for the résumés they will need to write in senior year.