Blog posing for Week 10/25

 

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.

Possible Roommate Changes: 

Hello Families, in early November we’ll send each of our students a Google Form to fill out.  At the end of the semester, all students on campus have the ability to change roommates.  So we have done the same for the last few years.  If students don’t want to change they don’t have to, they’ll tell us in this form.  If they do, we ask that they let us know their top 5 choices of roommates, then who they don’t want to roommate with.  Then the staff works hard to make all students happy, unfortunately, sometimes this doesn’t work out but we do our best.  We do tell them that many times it’s not the best decision to room with your best friend.  We’ve had students, over the years, try this and end up not being the best of friends.  We encourage you to discuss this.  We will let students know the week prior to Thanksgiving Break who they are rooming with if there is a change.  Then the week they get back from break THRIVE staff and other students will help make the moves so everyone is moved before they leave for Winter Break.

Thanksgiving Break (November 20- 28).  

Students will need to be out of the dorms by 6 pm on Friday the 19th.  Please make sure you have made arrangements for this to happen.  Students will receive a check-off sheet the week prior (I’ll also share with families the week before the students-or as soon as I receive it from Housing).  I’d also suggest that students look at items that they won’t need over the Winter break and start to take some things home.  We will have a Room check the weekend prior to help ensure the rooms were clean the weekend before they leave, we will also remind the students that they need to leave their room very clean and organized when they leave.  We encourage families to make sure and look to see what they could take home on Thanksgiving break to help with this.

First-Year Students:

FIrst-Year Students Finals Week is November 29-3rd, the first-year students leave a week early during this first semester.  They will need to be out of the dorms by 6 pm on Friday the 3rd of December.  During this week the first-year students will have their finals for this semester and they will be able to leave after their last final.  There will also be a check-off sheet that the students will need to make sure of and do before they leave for Winter Break.  

University Foundations: Debra Southard   

Every day this week we have had short assignments due. Students did a lot of thinking about their goals, ambitions, and personal definition of success. We watched a couple of Will Smith's motivations videos and discussed them. Friday students were assigned a review of all of the assignments from the week and see if they are congruent or are all going in the same direction. 

Individual & Family Health and Relationships:  Debra Southard & Lisa Garnier 

We talked about positive ways of dealing with stress and discussed methods for better time management on Monday and Tuesday. The students are tasked with practicing different breathing techniques for lowering stress levels and then writing a short paragraph about the effectiveness of those techniques. On Friday, we talked about first aid and emergencies. Students are filling out an online health passport to use as a medical information card that can be carried in their wallets.

Technology Literacy:  Lisa Garnier

The class has been paired off to complete the final project in Technology Literacy which is an iMovie Book Trailer. Each pair drew two book titles and chose one to do an iMovie trailer on. They have been planning their storyboards this week and watching examples of Book trailers to get ideas of what they can do in their trailers.

Career Exploration: Michael Brunkhorst

This week the students will look at their past volunteer or job experiences.  I will ask them to have a printout of any past resumes and if not, talk to parents over the weekend to get information on what experiences they have had, starting dates, ending dates, and others.  It will be important to talk to your student during this week to help them get information in an email about what they have done so they can work on this during the next week.  They will continue to have assistance from students in my Transition class.

Second-Year Students:

2nd-Year Students Finals Week:

Finals week for our 2nd-year students is Monday, December 6th through Friday, December 10th.  The students will be able to leave after their last final, as they don’t have regular classes this week, it’s just finals.  You’ll want to get with your students to see when this might be.  We do encourage the students to leave once their last final is completed unless they have made arrangements with Dr. Manning to work at their internship during this time.  By having the students leave as soon as they are finished with finals, the rest of the students have more quiet time to continue to study with fewer distractions.  Students will need to be out of the dorms by 6 pm on Friday, December 10th.  

Transition Planning I: Gary Manning

We are talking about listening to each other and what type of listening skills we need to utilize when listening. Further, we are discussing body language and how your body language can tell another person a lot about you.  

Internship I: Gary Manning

 The students continue to work on resumes.  The resumes have good information on them but the students need to fine-tune the resumes.  We will work on that during class time and weekly meetings.  The students will start working on mock interviews in the next week.  

Here are some internship pictures…

Plato: Debra Southard

Most students completed Plato this week. This is the second-week students worked on the topic of their choice. I have heard that students are enjoying the topics. Students are learning how to manage their time in order to get plato completed daily. Students only need one hour a day for five days to have it completed for the week. 

THRIVE Activities:

Mentor Activities: This last Friday night the Student CEC group had a Halloween party for our kids.  It looks like they had fun.

Great Job Everyone!!  For more pictures please join our THRIVE Facebook and/or Instagram pages.

Important upcoming dates: 

Next Mentor Activity:  

This coming week, Hope is going to have a movie night.  Sounds like lots of popcorn and drinks will be happening at the Student Union.

Housing Informational Virtual Meeting for 3rd & 4th Year families:

The Housing information meeting has been set for November 8th from 6-7.  I’ll be sharing the link for this event later this week.  If you have questions please let me know.  If you want to be included also, please email me and I’ll send you the link.

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."