Life of a Fellow: Grace Haskell
Senior year often feels like a whirlwind of decisions and deadlines. But sometimes, it’s important to take a breath and a step back to understand that not everything needs to happen on the same timeline.
Working with high school students— and offering thoughtful advising— requires one thing beyond all else: patience.
Meet Grace
Grace Haskell is a Fellow at Kensington Health Sciences Academy. Grace is a recent graduate of Haverford College where they played soccer and studied English and Sociology. Grace grew up in Rhode Island and loves reading, theater, creative writing, and sewing projects.
Practicing Patience
Last August, when I began my role as a Fellow, I pictured the year ahead of me with a clear arc: Get to know my students, figure out their postsecondary goals, help them execute their pathway, and then watch them graduate with certainty in their next steps. While a lot of these elements were all accurate to my experience, I learned very quickly that there is never a perfect, uniform approach when it comes to building relationships and advising students.
During 12 Plus Fellows training, we went in depth into what our impact on students could look like and how we could set ourselves up to best serve those students. Understandably, before the school year began, our discussions revolved around hypothetical situations and thinking through the best approach to advising a diverse cohort of students. Our training period made me feel prepared and eager to begin working with my students right away.
I was placed at Kensington Health Sciences Academy, a community school in Kensington that has focused career training programs in the medical field (and is the school where 12 Plus began!). Being at a school where 12 Plus has a long, established relationship meant that many students were very familiar with our space. Teachers and administrators were also accustomed to our work and relied on us for a lot of school support. From helping pass out food at honors parties to setting up tables and chairs for school events to managing graduation practice, working at KHSA meant being folded directly into their tight knit community. Despite my eagerness to get started with advising students as soon as we got to school, the most important skill I built on throughout the year was practicing patience. Even with the assurances from my supervisors and coworkers, I had to experience for myself that everything we wanted to accomplish with our students would not happen on a smooth timeline.
Despite our ambitious team goals in terms of statistics like FAFSA completion or CCP applications, we are also very conscious that our students are not just data points to be filled. They all come with different circumstances and experiences and what might take one or two meetings to accomplish with one student could take ten or more meetings to accomplish with another. Being in a school every day is not just about having access to students, it is an essential part of how we can build relationships and trust with them. Growing these relationships took time, and with a few of my students, they didn’t open up to me about their postsecondary aspirations or worries until the last month (or even the last week) of school.
With some students, the most productive thing to do to make progress with their advising was playing a card game during lunch rather than questioning them on their postsecondary plans. Gaining their trust and learning who they were as both students and people is what ultimately helped me advise to the best of my ability. Learning to be patient with students who were being avoidant with discussions or seemed like they didn’t care about their pathway was difficult at first, but became essential to making sure I was there when they were ready to tackle questions about their future.
I also did a lot of learning alongside students, especially when I was not familiar with their interests. There were many times I didn’t have all the knowledge or information they needed but I hoped researching these questions together gave my students the impression that it was okay not to know all the answers right away. Practicing patience was not only a lesson I learned when advising students, but also when approaching questions in my own future. Just as I was advising them that it’s okay to not have their whole life mapped out, I had to remind myself that the same advice applied to me too. Some of my undecided students looked confused when I confided in them that I was also unsure what the future held for me. Once, a student even turned the tables on me and started suggesting what my next career move could be. These moments not only reminded me to have patience with myself, but also assured me that there was no “perfect” next step for anyone. I found comfort in reinforcing with my students that even if we didn’t know exactly what our career would look like right now, the best thing we could do was point ourselves in the right direction.
Even though their time in high school has come to an end, these students will continue to explore, and change their minds, and figure out what’s best for them. The best part about working at 12 Plus is that we get to be a part of that journey, whether it leads to getting scholarships for the college of their choice or an entry level job in the field they're most interested in discovering. I have truly enjoyed the slow process of building relationships with students throughout this year, and it has encouraged me not only to reflect on my own career aspirations but also to practice patience in all aspects of my life. This Fellowship has been a wonderful opportunity to learn that working as an advisor is a lot less about telling students what to do, where to go, or what's the best path for them, and is much more about building connections and empowering students to explore opportunities they may not have known were there.
