Week 4/18 Post

 

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.

Notes from the Director:

Our team is gearing up for next year.  Dr. Manning has been enrolling students in classes.  They were asked to pick 5 classes that they’d like to take from the catalog and put them in order of preference.   

DORM Update for next Fall/Spring: 

In the past month, THRIVE staff learned that Ellis Dining hall was going to be remodeled next Spring semester.  While we are happy that the dining hall is getting some additions we learned that the dining hall choices were going to be on the other side of campus.  With this in mind THRIVE staff and Housing began to contemplate an option for our students.  Todd Dining hall is on the other side of campus just SouthWest of the Union.  

  

After careful consideration, the THRIVE Staff and Housing have decided to move the THRIVE Hall for next year’s fall and spring semesters.  Due to the remodel the other options for students for dining were on the other side of campus.  This creates concern during the winter months, especially, for students to have to walk to the other side of campus during inclement weather.  So, next fall/spring the students and mentors will be moved to South Yeater.  This is right next to the Todd Dining hall and creates a better climate for our students during the Ellis dining hall remodel.  S. Yeater has an elevator and multiple locations for the students to lounge or study on the ground floor, first floor, and third floor of the complex.  We are still interviewing for next year’s first-year students.  Once we finalize the new students we’ll be able to finalize our roommate selections.  We typically let students know this a couple of weeks before the spring semester ends.

We will still maintain mentor coverage where our students are located.  We understand that this is a new location for our students.  We’ll plan on taking the current first-year students on a tour of S. Yeater in the coming weeks.  We were excited to be able to keep everyone in the same building and closer to a dining hall during this time.  THRIVE will move back to the Ellis Complex after the remodel of Ellis is finished, we hope in time for the fall/spring of 2023/24 school year.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

First-Year Students:

Workplace & Community Skills - (Mrs. Southard and Dr. Manning): 

Students are working on improving their writing skills by writing a one-page paper about their last internship. Students this week also wrote about places they would like to job shadow in the fall semester. Wednesday we walked over to Yeater Hall to see the facilities. 

Learning Strategies- (Mrs. Southard)

Students were reminded to let us know if they were going home on Easter weekend or not. Also, we would not be off for Good Friday or the following Monday. Discussing this week centered around Bloom's taxonomy and the different questions instructors write on tests. Explained the differences between recalling facts, explaining ideas, and drawing a connection among ideas.

Daily & Independent Living Skills (DILS)-  (Mrs. Garnier)

We have started our last unit of the semester: Consumer Skills. We will spend the last couple of weeks of the semester discussing spending money wisely. We learned about unit pricing and how to calculate it to get the most for our money and began discussing how price and quality aren’t necessarily the same. Just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s high quality and just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s poor quality. We also talked about how sometimes we get what we pay for (cheap=poor quality; expensive=high quality) and sometimes you don’t.

Second-Year Students:

Transition Planning II: (Dr. Manning)

This week we did money activities using bills/coins.  The students still struggle with using bills/coins when paying for items.  Further, the students have a difficult time deciding whether or not they have enough money to pay for items.  We will continue working on using bills/coins in class.  

Internship II:  (Dr. Manning)

We worked on the students’ mock interviews.  The students will be doing two mock interviews over the next couple of weeks.  One mock interview will be at the UCM Career Service Office.  The other mock interview will be with the THRIVE staff as part of their final.  

The students are finishing their professional portfolios.  All students should have a resume, cover letter, 3 letters of recommendation, and their Professional Development Plan in their portfolio.  

Plato- (Mrs. Southard)  Most students completed plato on time. Students need to make sure they are on the right subject matter when working on a topic. Once in a while, a student will work beyond the time required on one subject because they think they are on a different subject. Then don’t have one finished that week. 

THRIVE Activities: 

We hopefully will have our second softball game tonight.  I’ll keep you posted on Facebook if things change.  I’ll also try to get pictures online in a couple of days after the game.  Here are some pictures from last week’s game.  

Mentor Activities: 

The next mentor activity was Saturday.  Cooking with Claire… In the pictures below… many of our students went home for the weekend so we had a smaller group for this activity.  All students that were on campus were invited to attend.  Look like they had fun.

THRIVE Formal:

This Friday, at 5 pm our Students will have their THRIVE Formal that has been put together by the Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority since THRIVE started. We ask that all students attend so that our mentors can all attend and have fun with the students. We'll have the mentors' post pictures after the event.

Just a reminder that the pictures posted on the blog are typically just a sample of what is on Facebook.  So, if you want to see more and keep more updated, please go to our Facebook page - UCM-THRIVE.

Important upcoming dates:

Here are some pictures from last Monday’s game.  We’ll have our last game tonight at 8 pm.

"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."