Fellows Faves: A Day in the Life of a Fellow
Every 12 Plus school is a little different and that means that every Fellow’s daily experiences are as well. In this post, follow Sarah through a day as our Fellow at Kensington High School.
Meet Sarah:
“Everyday as a fellow with 12 Plus looks so different depending what programs, individual advising sessions, or team meetings we need to do! This is just a sample of one Friday in my life working as a student advisor. As one of our 12th graders said, this post could have been a lot shorter and I could have just said “I wake up, go to work, get annoyed by kids, go home.” Although the kids may think they’re annoying us, solving their problems and learning about their aspirations has been my favorite part of this job and is something I get to do everyday, in one form or another. We have about three months left and I cannot wait to see what additional progress we make before graduation!”
6:00 am
Wake up after snoozing my alarm three different times (so it’s more like 6:15 by the time I get up). Start the coffee before I brush my teeth and get ready!
6:30 am
Eat a light breakfast and have some coffee while I check if my bus is on time. Sometimes I have to take my breakfast to go if I see that it’s coming early!
6:47 am
Catch my bus! I use my SEPTA key card monthly pass to pay (thanks fellow perks).
7:00 am
Time to transfer buses! When the SEPTA gods are in my favor I can jump right on my bus to KHS but sometimes I can be waiting up to 15 minutes for my next bus to arrive.
7:15 am
Arrive at KHS and get the center ready. If I arrive first I pick out music for the day, recently we’ve been loving the Tiny Desk Concerts. Students start arriving after 7:30 and we stand outside our door to greet them!
7:45am-9am
I usually spend our first block doing research and reviewing my cohort to identify who I should meet with. We also meet with students but Fridays we close our center during class periods to do prep work! Today was fun prep to see how much an iHop breakfast will be for one class at KHS. We’re doing an advisory competition (what they call homeroom) for the class that has the most students applied to the Community College of Philadelphia by March 28! I researched estimated costs, planned where we will hold it, and made an invite list. Sometimes there are interruptions though…
9:00am-9:30am
Time for advisory! We usually spend this half hour walking to classes to meet with students, or calling them down to do work. Today we supported a career and entrepreneurship initiative using Xello, a new platform the school district is using. We helped students get set up on this platform where they needed to build out their resume and learn about different career paths.
10:00am
Had a meeting with a parent to create a FAFSA account, but they no-showed.
10:30am
An 11th grader was sent from her teacher to work on the Xello career paths initiative, so I got to talk to her about her interest in becoming a patissier.
11am
From 11am to 1 pm are the school’s lunch periods! This is our main point of access for students at KHS. They can come to our Plus center during their lunch period to check applications, work on their resume, or get homework help, but we also just play games too. UNO and Jenga are favorites at KHS but recently I’ve been getting challenged in checkers.
12:00pm
I get schooled in Jenga
12:30pm
I take my own lunch break, today I had gluten free tortellini with pesto sauce.
2:34pm
Final bell! At this time we clean the center, debrief about our day with our site team members and catch up if we missed anything.
2:45pm
After school I ran to Forin across the street to get their banana matcha latte.
3:30pm
At 3:30 I get off my second bus and I’m home from school.
6:30pm
For dinner my friend and I made Vietnamese spring rolls. I find spending time with friends and family to be the best way to decompress after a long day at school!
