Dear High School Guidance Counselors, Yesterday, I heard Michelle Obama talk about the anger that she felt when her guidance counselor tried to persuade her not to apply to Princeton. Her counselor told her that Princeton was two competitive for someone with her background. Ms. Obama set out to prove her counselor wrong, and she did. The story is familiar. A young Hispanic man from Los Angeles told me that his guidance counselor tried to persuade him not to apply to Stanford because his SAT scores were low. He applied any, was accepted, graduated, and remained at Stanford for graduate school. I also watched a documentary called Tale of Two Schools. At a predominately White public high school in Long Island, New York, the guidance counselor told her student that he needed a “reach” school. Only a few miles away, at a predominately Black public high school in Long Island, a Black guidance counselor convinced a Black student with a B average that he needed to apply to a “safe” school, i.e. a community college. These are the points: 1. It is NOT your job to tell any student what they can’t do. It is your job to find out what they want to do and teach them the best strategy to make it happen. 2. It is NOT your job to provide a student with the easiest or most convenient option. It is your job to help them to plot the path to the BEST option. Let 9th graders know that a college will not look at anything they did from K – 8, so this is your chance to make it happen. Let 12th graders know that there is only one way to guarantee that they will not be accepted to a college; which is not applying. Tell them all to #reachhigher. Respectfully, Ivory
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 14:24:26 +0000
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