Site Director Ernest Tam and Fellow Erin Agnew on the first day in the Hill Freedman World Academy PLUS Center

After an amazing year at Hill Freedman World Academy, Erin is moving on to study Law at Temple University next year. We will miss her consistent preparation, unending humor, and huge smile. Thank you for all you did this year, Erin!

It takes a village to raise a child. It’s a phrase we learn in faith communities, parental advice books, and introductory sociology courses. And it’s a sentiment that grows truer and truer as the world be live in gets bigger, more networked, and more data driven with each passing year of developments. We talk a lot about family involvement at 12 PLUS. I have talked a lot about family involvement at every education-based job I have ever had. We talk about students as the center-focus of a team comprised of their families, their schools, us as their advisers and cheering section, and many other seen and unseen support mechanisms. We talk about reassuring parents that they are still the primary supporter of their child and that seeking and accepting help with navigating the postsecondary landscape does not undermine their wisdom and ability to guide their family. We talk about honesty in drawing from our personal experiences with the many tests and applications required to see students successfully through high school. We talk about carving ourselves a unique niche between teacher, counselor, friend, mentor, tutor, and consultant. This has left me with a clear but nuanced advising philosophy: we have to be vulnerable but tough to do right by our students and families. I’ve seen this philosophy work wonders. This year, students have assigned family honorifics to past and current 12 PLUS team members: Mom, Uncle, Grandma. Many of my advising cohort of seniors have punctuated my name in their phone contact list with strings of gleeful but barely interpretable emojis. Many of these students have shed solemn or sloppy tears behind the little table I’ve come to call my desk. Many more of them have rung the blue cowbell reserved for announcing college or training program acceptances - prompting jumps, cheers, and hugs from everyone in the room. We’ve developed these rituals of strategizing for success, regrouping from setbacks, and celebrating each step towards progress. I would  never elevate myself so much a to say I helped raise anyone’s child. But, this year, I became part of the village, and I consider that one of my greatest accomplishments to date.

Thinking about the levels of support students need and deserve to have in their villages illustrates just how much the character of postsecondary success has changed in our collective memory. There was a time in not so distant history when a high school diploma was sufficient to grant success. That education and a strong work ethic was enough to open the door to a job. That job likely offered consistent enough wages to live somewhere, buy some groceries, and support the incidentals of travel, evenings out and the other activities that make a life well rounded. A village could get you there. That village needed to include some family love, some teacher support, maybe some professional connections, and a few open doors. To pursue a college degree in that time, the village may need to expand to include a tutor or two, and some sundry employers to help a student save enough for tuition. Now, we are told we need another degree is necessary for that kind of stability. This degree often requires steep loans to pay it’s way (the metaphor I’ve come to use in advising is “taking a mortgage out on your brain”), and comes with the challenges of navigating the college life ecosystem of social, extracurricular, and work opportunities and pressures. Or we find one of the many incredible non-college pathways available; and it work for us. But we have to do the work of representing them as good pathways, and answer seemingly endless questions about why we’ve chosen to pursue something other than what is considered traditional. That is, assuming we are aware of these pathways, have the confidence to pursue them, and have the right vocabulary to get ourselves through the door in the first place. For this, the village must grow. The village that once needed only to have some family, a healthy community, and a handful of caring teachers in it must now include experts.

Hill Freedman's Team flag for the 2018 12+ Mini-Olympics

These experts become necessary, not because the parents and caring community members in a student’s village can’t navigate the systems of tests and applications, but because the system has sprouted up around them. The system changes every two or three years, and it takes a full time commitment to navigate it well enough to get students where they need to be with the supports they deserve. When my advising cohort’s parents entered our conversations with memories of their own college and career application processes, they largely remembered a system which no longer exists. Their student had new hurdles to clear - the SAT and ACT, setting up Common Application and Naviance profiles, adding profiles on Fastweb, ScholarshipOwl, CollegeGreenLight, and Raise.me if they planned to pursue external scholarship, procuring and tracking every College Board and NACAC Fee Waiver required to cover the cost of each application, entering tax information from two years ago into FAFSA and PHEAA, securing digitally sent transcripts (both current, midyear, and finalized end of year) and letters of recommendation for each application, following up on all requests for verification documents which colleges and programs invariably requested, taking placements tests, sending standardized test scores, and re-taking placement tests, enrolling in classes, and finding a useful and instructive way to spend each summer between classes. All of this demands to be navigated on stringent timelines, while students also upkeep pride-worthy grades and class performances.

Ernest and Erin on their last day in the Hill Freedman PLUS Center.

I have cherished every conversation I’ve had with parents this year. I’ve cherished them when they entered the conversation with documents, plans, and checklists. I’ve cherished them when they were run entirely through students’ worried text messages. I’ve cherished them when parents came into the PLUS Center wide-eyed with excitement and concern about the future. It is precious to share times of excitement and re-strategizing as a trusted member of a student’s team. It is empowering and intimidating to step into the role of expert on that family’s team. But, that is what 12 PLUS exists for. We are here for the planning, the hard work, the behind the scenes data tracking, the networking, the striving, the celebrating, and the following up. We are here to humbly offer ourselves as one more member of the village all working together to get the students Philadelphia has raised on to their next steps, goals, and dreams. And what an honor it has been to see so many students get there this year.

A Fellowship year is not easy! We ask our Fellows to play a lot of different roles because we know they are skilled and hardworking professionals who can handle it. Below, Tiasia shares what it was like bringing her own experience into the many roles she was asked to play this year, and how that translated to working with students. Read her story below:

There is no question the work 12 PLUS does with the students in Philadelphia is challenging. Motivating a high school student to commit themselves to a college or career pathway requires tremendous fortitude and emotional energy. It is a seemingly daunting task for students, and for the Fellow advising them, it can be just as taxing. At Kensington Health Sciences Academy, the situations we encounter on a daily basis can be serious and heart wrenching, so it is imperative during a complex senior year that we allow students to deliberately take pride in their efforts and each other, no matter what path they take onto higher education.

By National Decision Day on May 1st, every student with a plan to attend college or enlist in the military will have had completed college and career applications, FAFSA, compared award letters, and finally, made a solid decision about where they are going next year. For students with less traditional pathways, this time can be less engaging. Four-year bound students at KHSA are surprisingly the most relaxed bunch of students I have ever encountered in my life. Most students committed to Community College of Philadelphia have just completed their placement exam and are now beginning to contemplate their decision to pursue college after realizing they will need at least one class to develop their academic skills to be college ready.  There are two-year and four-year bound students who know exactly what they want to do. There are students who are pursuing vocational and technical programs to learn trade skills that will allow them to expand on their interest. Students pursuing special placement and job training programs are rarely acknowledged or celebrated. But, among all of these students are many who are still exploring whether these paths are ones that they should take, and those conversations are the ones that are most rewarding to me. 12 PLUS has grown to embrace the idea of laying out as many options as possible for all of our students, even those students who are categorized into groups who have committed. While diversity and inclusion are staples of the PLUS Center, students do not always feel motivated to speak to each other about their future plans and instead find solace in discussing teenage things such as how to crash the set of Creed at our local boxing gym. These initially unproductive conversations have turned into short lessons such as what our elevator pitch would look like to make the production team donate to our school and cause. I am someone who believes there is a lesson to be learned in everything we see and do. As Fellows, we are in a powerful position to be able to transform these seemingly unproductive discussions into lifelong tools that students can carry with them outside school doors.

I have taken my passion for exploring career possibilities and applied it directly to my work with students. If you ask most of our students who 12 PLUS is, they will describe us as friends, teachers, or reminders, but we are much more than that. We are academic advisors, confidants, educators, job developers, mentors, case managers, retention officers, and sometimes even workforce advisors. We bring together students from all walks of life to act on the common goal of becoming powerful community leaders, whether it be in college, military or the workforce. At 12 PLUS it is not just about where you are. Your success is not determined by just how far you have come, but also by where you are going. 12 PLUS understands that not all students want to pursue college. We also understand that it can be even more difficult to say that you do not want to pursue college confidently once you are already enrolled or in debt. It is our role to ask students the hard questions directly and indirectly, such as are you thinking big enough? Are you thinking long term? Yes, you want to be a cook at a restaurant because your dad is a Sous Chef, but have you ever considered owning your own restaurant?

I have learned through my Fellowship year that regardless of how many times I change my mind about which path to take myself, my passion remains the same: challenging and rewiring the way people view themselves, what they are capable of, and the world around them. While I used to be ashamed of my incapacity to stay focused on one concentration within sociology, I now take pride in my ability to relate to students across the career spectrum. In fact, I encourage students who feel as lost as I once did to follow the same steps I did. Ask questions; believe in your right to change your mind as you learn and experience more; act on what you don’t know; and be unapologetic in your strive to find your purpose. It won’t always be easy, but it will always be worth it in the end.

Ingrid shares with us her story of finding new moments to share with students that reframe er works as a 12+ Fellow. We are so grateful she chose to share this journey with us.

One of the most pivotal moments of the year for me had to be a moment I shared with a student in the month of March. At the beginning of the year, one of my projects was to coordinate Student of the Month for KHSA. If I am being honest, some months I struggle to get the winners posted in our Center on time. Requesting nominations from teachers and reviewing nominees for the Freshmen, Sophomore, Junior and Senior classes takes time, and some months it is challenging to get the nominations up by the 1st of the month. As tedious as the task may seem at times, I absolutely love seeing the winners’ faces light up when I tell them the good news. As winners, students are asked to answer some fun questions about themselves so that biographies could be shared on the bulletin board in our Center. This information then gets hung up next to their picture that stays up all month long in our Center. It is an opportunity for peers to celebrate each other and also get to know their peers.

Last month, a student in my cohort of advisees won “Student of the Month” for the senior class. Upon telling her the news, I asked her to return the answers to her questionnaire to me as soon as she was able to. The following day, she gave me her responses. I have made it a practice to skim the student’s answers in front of them just in case I have a question about their handwriting. As I quickly looked at her paper, I noticed my name. The prompt was: “Name two people you admire.”

“Wait, you wrote me down as someone you admire?” I asked surprisingly, to which she responded, “Of course, Miss, because you make me feel like I can do anything, and if you went to college, so can I.”

At that moment, all I could muster was “You absolutely can go to college,” and gave her a hug. If you ask my family or friends, they would say it is hard to get a reaction out of me. I am not one to wear my heart on my sleeve, but that day on my way home, I cried. I was beyond humbled that a student would view me in such a light. More so, I realized that our positions as Fellows come with extraordinary responsibilities

When I made the decision to join 12 PLUS, it was with the intention of supporting students with their post-secondary path and with the hope of forming relationships. I am not sure I really understood the gravity of our work. It is fair to say some days I question if I am doing anything right as a Fellow. I wonder if I am giving my best to our students. Some days I leave the center drained and any energy I have must go to my graduate school work, but regardless of my demands outside the center, I owe it to my students to give them the best of me.

On that day last month, I knew all my frustrations were worth it and all my doubts disappeared.