Consultant Projects

For our Consultant Projects for LOT, Leaders of Tomorrow, our class will divide into four seperate teams to complete various tasks. These teams include: Grant Organization Plan, Fundraiser, Social Media Marketing, and Print Media Marketing. I would like to work with the Grant Organization Plan Team! Although I am not very familiar with the grant writing process, I would definitely like to learn! I think it would be something that could potentially be good for me to know in my future as a teacher working with various organizations, etc. My second choice team is the Fundraiser Team. Again, I think planning and executing a a fundraiser would be beneficial experience for me to have before I begin working in a classroom. If I am on the Grant Organization Team, I hope to be able to contribute a lot of my time to fully researching any possible grants that would benefit LOT. I am hoping that once we find these available grants another Carlow course could complete the process by writing the grant if we do not have enough time, which has been done in the past. One strength I think I will be able to add to the team is my organization skills. I like to think that I am a very organized person, and I think this skill would help keep all of our research together better. On the other hand, I think a challenge that I might face will come from my inexperience with the whole grant process. However, I know my professors will be more than willing to help! :)

Personal Community Innovation Project

For my Personal Community Innovation Project, I think I would like to read Waiting for Superman: How We Can Save America's Failing Public Schools. There was a film produced based off of this book, so you may have seen it. I did not actually see the movie, but I think this book is going to be very interesting. I hope to get a better idea about the causes of failing public schools and what can be done to prevent this from occuring because I think that children and their education is such a prominent and important issue in current times. In addition, I plan on looking into articles that may present a counter viewpoint, such as opinions on the parent trigger law and other school options, such as the voucher system. I will keep you updated on my reactions to the book as soon as I begin reading!

After reading some of the articles assigned, I have discovered a few different perspectives concerning the education of African Americans. From Black Student College Graduation Rates, it was great to see that the graduation rates of black students are improving. However, it is sad to learn that there is still a large gap between black and white graduation rates and not much is being done to bridge this gap. It was also interesting to read that a lot of the colleges with higher gradution rates tend to use programs, such as mentoring, to assist African American students with their first college experience. Likewise, Debunking Education Myths about Blacks listed a variety of steps that could be taken to get African American students on track towards graduating. For instance, counseling, mentoring, and interships, are just a few of the strategies listed for helping to improve these graduation rates. I am excited to begin this partnership with LOT, Leaders of Tomorrow, this semester. I am very interested to see some of the strategies they utilize to help today's youth succeed in high school and pursue higher education. Overall, I am excited to begin this networking experience and working with others for a good cause!

Introduction

Hello! My name is Mary Conley, and I am a senior early childhood education major at Carlow University. This is my first time blogging, so please bear with me! I plan on using this blog to reflect my thoughts and feelings about a service learning course, Community Innovatin through Networking. I was a little nervous about this course at first, but I really think I am going to enjoy working with other people and completing projects that actually matter! During our first class, we completed an activity to try to narrow down various topics that we could use for our personal community innovation projects this semester. I definitely am interested in children and their education. I was thinking possibly something about failing public schools in our nation but am still trying to narrow it down...