Week of February 25th.

THRIVE Director Notes

Posts on this Blog will be directed to help families see what is going on in our THRIVE Program.  Items discussed on the Blog have already occurred. To keep updated on what’s coming up please refer to the THRIVE activity calendar or UCM activity calendar.

First-Year Students:

Workplace & Community Skills:

This was the second interview week so classes had to adjust to a different schedule.  Students participated in their second job shadowing activity. Each student was assigned a different career to experience. Also, an assignment was additional work on Missouri Connections. Students were to answer various questions related to your likes/dislikes as it relates to career fields. The program will arrange the student’s career preferences based on those answers.  The topic on Wednesday Class was about ethics. We defined what the word met and read workplace dilemmas and discussed possible solutions. Discussed was ways for an employee to show ethical behavior. Being on time, organization, appearance, character, team member, attitude, productive, cooperative, respectful and good communication skills we some of the items covered.

Gary also caught some of our First-Year students at their job shadow.  Don’t they look like they are ready for work!!

Learning Strategies:

We had a short class on Monday explaining the fun activity for this week. Students were assigned “The Lifeboat”. Students were asked to use several skills to select who would “get on the life-boat.” Students used reasoning, debating, compromising and critical thinking skills to select who they believed should get on the lifeboat and who would be left on the deserted island. They were to first decide individually, then get with their study group and then the entire class on Wednesday to make a group decision.

Personal Math:

Personal Math is continuing to focus on budgets, adding and subtracting money, multiplying and dividing money, and learning how to manage money in case of an unexpected expense.

Second-Year Students:

Transition Planning II:

The students are working extremely hard on their resumes and cover letters.  The students are getting help from the UCM Career Service Office. I asked the students to go to the UCM Career Service Office this week to get that extra help.  This is a great resource for our students to utilize.

Some pictures of the students looking at their resumes and references.  

Internship II:

The students' supervisors have done their mid-term progress reports.  The students and I will discuss these reports one on one during our weekly meetings.  There are items that the students are doing well in. There are items that we need to continue to improve on.

PLATO:

Students continued to work on plato. Some did not complete their needed 2 hours and was required to go to study hall.

Study Time:

We are still having some students come into the classroom to study.  Great job!! Nash enjoys seeing how he can help…

THRIVE Activities:

This weekend the students did the following activity.

This weekend we had the students making blueberry, chocolate chip, and regular pancakes.  Sam put this activity together. It had to be rescheduled from our original time frame of Saturday due to so many students volunteering to help with another campus activity at WC Morris building.  But, Sunday morning many of our students were downing pancakes, as you’ll see below.

Important upcoming dates:

Athletics to watch:  Men’s and Women’s Basketball games are completed, the Jennies should be playing in the post-season, so the students should be able to listen to games.   UCM Mules Wrestling also has some matches in the coming weeks. Towards the middle of March, the Baseball team will also start their games.

In addition, the students can participate in Intramural Athletics:

• We had enough students to have a Spring Softball team.  I’ll keep you updated on the dates of the games.
• The students can also look to their Spring Student Activities calendar that was left for them the first week.  We also have copies in the THRIVE Classroom.

"This blog is a programming blog written by the director and staff of the THRIVE Program on the University of Central Missouri campus.  This blog doesn't accept any form of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions.

The views and ideas expressed on this blog are purely the blog owners.  This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.  We are simply telling you what we plan to do in our program and using the blog to help spread what we are doing on a weekly basis."