First thing I think about in April is that I wish I had more time to log on to this site and keep up with all the resources that are being posted. It is now a goal of mine to log on a minimum of once a week so that I am not playing catch up/missing all the wonderful links that are being posted.
As the word spreads about the project, I am having more and more people approach me with ideas and send me links via e-mail and Facebook. Recently I ran across this great Facebook post about a program that a high school was doing where the students were given a budget based on their GPA and were randomly assigned a spouse, number of kids, animals, etc. Then they had to go to each station to buy insurance, buy a car, pay bills, buy food... all things necessary in life and they had to do it based on their budget amount. I thought it was a great idea, so I shared the post and low and behold, I discovered that our local credit union has a similar program called Bite of Reality. I have volunteered to work one of the tables when they hold it at the high school in May and after discussing it with the coordinator, we have begun discussions on how we can host one for middle school/junior high aged students this summer. So moral of the story - talk to everyone lol - and IF you are thinking of life skills or school loans, debt, credit workshops - check with your local banks/credit unions to see if they don't already have a program that they could essentially run for you!
By luck (or it seems like luck anyway... maybe fate?) we received a free librarian sample of the magazine Teen Ink (Apr 2017). Now it was mailed to our Mina library, our Mina librarian recently moved, so I have been making the occasional 30 min trip to fill in and happened to check the mail and find the magazine. This particular issue is the college issue and is full of amazing statistics, college information, summer programs, articles about writing essays for scholarships, actual copies of people's essays they sent to colleges, charts on the fastest-growing occupations and wages for occupations and so much more. If you can get your hands on a copy I highly recommend having this as a resource tool. I have even approached my director about us getting a subscription.
Our second (and probably final) round table was a great success. This is where I was able to narrow down my community partners, we came up with some possible ideas for programs, discussed how to reach the kids and so much more. I felt it was a very productive meeting and I am glad I went ahead and held a second one. It really was a great way for me to reach out to my community and let every one's voices be heard. I was able to complete my April action plan as a direct result of this meeting.
I was making a list all month of key points to talk about and I think that covers it! :-)