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Miami Connections is a partnership with our local district. It is an alternative school
that is located on our campus in Boyd Hall. And it offers opportunities for Miami students
to get involved as academic tutors, one-on-one mentors, and we also have student assistants
and student researchers, too.
Our Talawanda students are with us at Miami for half their school day. So, and they have
one teacher with them. And while they’re out at Miami they’re working on online courses,
mostly. But they can also be working on some work they bring from their traditional classes
back at the high school.
So typically our tutors will sit with students while they are working on their online coursework
and help them stay on task. Our mentors are one-on-one, kind of like “big brothers,
big sisters.” And they’re there to provide social and emotional support—some of those
things that we don’t always give our K-12 students in the schools. They’re really
there as a role model and somebody who just takes an interest in them, and says “What’s
going on this week?” and helps them set goals.
The idea of a partnership is really to benefit both partners, and I think that Miami Connections
does that. We have some wonderful data that show that our high school students who are
with us have increased their grades, they have increased their success with behavior.
They have achieved those credits that allows them then to be able make some decisions as
juniors and seniors. And right now our first group is still working with our teacher—some
of them—to apply to college, and that’s really a big deal with this group.
We had an undergraduate assistant do some interviews with our high school students and
they really like being out in the college environment and learning from college students.
They appreciate the interaction. It makes them think that college might be for them
someday. They like to come out to our classroom and “chill,” which just means to us it’s
a different environment where they feel more relaxed. And doing their work with support
from Miami students is something that’s good for them. It’s something that they
appreciate.
Then from our college students who’ve been involved, a lot of our college students find
the experience to be a big challenge because they’re working with people who come from
very different backgrounds. It sometimes takes the high school students awhile to warm up.
But they find it a very rewarding experience and one that helps them prepare for what life
holds for them beyond.
The program is really what I’m all about—because it’s very satisfying knowing that high school
students are benefiting and that hopefully our teachers are going to be better prepared
working specifically with this population.