First Spring Blog posting: week 1/13.

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 your students or UCM activity calendar.

First-Year Students:

Workplace & Community Skills: Taught by Dr. Manning and Mrs. Southard. Dr. Manning went over somethings to know for the new semester.

• How to email professors
• Where classes are located
• What to do if you miss a class
• Sit up front in your non-THRIVE class
• Being proactive 
• Blackboard assignment due Wednesday

Learning Strategies: We continued discussion on Monday about starting the semester. 

Self Defense class for women starts Feb 10. This is free to all students. We discussed how to sign up and where it is located. Also discussed was goal setting. Each student was asked to have a personal goal in mind when they come to see Mrs. Southard this week.  Wednesday students were reminded what will be due Thursday and Friday. Mrs. Southard asked if anyone needed help getting their computers to read plato or other textbooks to them. The organization was a big topic this week. Cleaning out notebooks and clearing off desktop as well as labeling assignments. Students will be expected to keep their own to-do list. We will not be using class time all semester to complete that. It will be the student’s responsibility to do that. 

Personal Math: I’m happy to be back this semester! In personal math, we have started with concepts relating to money. We will have five units of study consisting of Budgeting and Prioritizing Personal & Financial Goals, Banking, Saving and Investing, Credit, and Consumer Skills. So far, we’ve reviewed what money is and its value, as well as beginning a review of money management concepts such as the differences between needs and wants and the value of financial goal setting. We learned about short-term goals, intermediate goals, and long-term goals and each student will be setting a personal goal for the semester. We have short math homework assignments each class period this semester to practice skills, in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and percentages. The semester is off to a great start. I can’t wait to see what the students will accomplish this spring!

Second-Year Students:

Transition Planning II:  This semester we will be discussing/working on monthly budgets, income, expenses and needs/wants.   The students are starting with a job that pays them $12/hour and they are working 40 hours/week. We have figured that they will be making roughly $1900/month.  Today we starting discussing expenses in a monthly budget. This brought on a lot of discussions with the students. It is interesting in the students’ view of how much certain items may cost per month. (Ex: rent, food, cell phones and etc..)

Internship II: All students have started their internships.  Some of the new places students are doing their internships at are UCM Career Service Office, Office of Accessibility Services (OAS), Heroes Restaurant, and Starbucks Coffee.  Students are working between 15 - 20 hours a week. As of right now the students are enjoying their internships and getting used to working different hours/weekends.  

Here are a few pictures of the students in their internships.  Dr. Manning had them starting early and they were working hard.

PLATO: Students did not have new assessments for January. Students had just completed December assessments before they left for winter break. 

THRIVE Activities:

Welcome back Party for the students.  Leigha had a make your pizza and movie party.  Here are a few of the pictures. There are more on our Facebook Page: 

The weekend before classes.  However, we did have some snow and some of the students came early and had some fun in the snow.

Important upcoming dates:

Athletics to watch:  Men’s and Women’s Basketball games are on.  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: Students will need to watch the back table for any upcoming activities.

"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."