Planning: Designing your Future

These resources are intended to help you build your students' context around college life, and how the decisions they make today affect their opportunities in the future. If you find these helpful, thank Anjoli! She did an amazing job finding these for everyone!

Big ideas in this blog:

• What does it mean to be a college student?
• What does it mean to be a college athlete?
• Exploring how the decisions we make now affect our future. 

Vocab development:

This may or may not be the first time your students are discussing the world of college. Below are some vocabulary words to consider when introducing the topic and this link will guide you to The Vocabulary of College - Vocabulary List generated by vocabulary.com.

You may notice the intermingling of the words school, college and university and how they all can have the same meaning. Here is a brief article discussing the differences and a short charming video from the NY Times with a teacher introducing college to first graders.

What does it mean to be a college student?

• Ready to introduce college to your students, here is a blog shared by a 3rd grade teacher with 4 great tips of ways to introduce college to your classroom.
• Here is a brief article about what it means to be a first generation college student.
• Want to explore college ranking’s with your students check out this recent article from NPR.
• Start a discussion about the idea college with this short video of college students, with differing opinions, explaining what they believe it means to be a college  student vs a short video of high school students sharing their beliefs of what college and career readiness means to them. 
• Explore the campus of University of Pennsylvania to glimpse into the world of your student athlete mentor with these links:
• A 6 minute video from College Life Presents: UPENN giving history of the campus and an idea of what daily life looks like for UPENN students. This video also shouts out UPENN athletics! (Please watch ahead of time, at about 4min in begins to discuss more adult topics)
• Discover the locations your student athlete mentor navigate with this interactive campus map! Hint: When clicking the Discover Penn and Public Art options you can find out some neat spots on campus!

What does it mean to be a college student athlete?

• Link to an article discussing the differences of being a college student athlete vs being a college student.
• A glimpse into a day in the life of a student athlete as shared by USC Track & Field high jumper Herb Dew takes us through a day in his life.
• An article recommended for older students about The Life of a Student Athlete from Huffington Post.

College is not the only option:

• There are several other options to discover besides going to college. This article from Forbes suggests some great alternatives.   
• For your older students this is an article that can put into context the value of vocational training for the workforce. Note: There is a lot of new vocabulary worth exploring with your students before digging into the article. 
• A short and informative read from the Harvard Gazette about the rising value and importance of vocational training in the states, citing that “only three in 10 young people earn a bachelor’s degree by their mid-20s.”

Decisions today affect tomorrow:

• We don’t always have to wait till we are adults to think big! Here is a link to a TED talk discussing what adults can learn from kids.
• In the next few months you will be exploring topics like goal setting and perseverance and here is a short video of a student who set his goal to be a writer and persevered through several challenges of affording college until he was awarded a scholarship to pursue his goals.
• Planning for the future can be intimidating, so have fun and enjoy activities like training like an astronaut or have students practice writing a job description for their dream job.
• Need a boost, enjoy a pep talk from Kid President and explore what you and your students can do to make the world awesome for the today and tomorrow!