Love from Senior Coaches

Right before the real deal ACT in April, all of the senior coaches came up with speeches and gifts for their junior coaches. Colin and Mitch said the following before splitting up and reading separate poems for us:

C: TO HARDING!
M: Though you face harrowing dangers at the upcoming ACT.
C: Worry not, young apprentices, soon enough you will be free.
M: Your students will do great and apply their Kaplan training.
C: You've taught them well, and there's no risk of it waning.
M: And though at times it may seem that the panic never ceases,
C: Rest assured, college access heroes, there will be major score increases.
M: So to the two junior coaches who roam the halls of
C: Thank god you're coming back, as I don't think they could stand your parting.
M: Any new folks would pale to the magical Abigail
C: And your students, sparkly Victoria, do immortally adore ya.

Mitch read this for me and also had gifts to go along with the theme, which should become clear pretty quickly.

Abigail, sit right down and take a trip to Hogwarts
After months of Kaplan methods make the hat do all the sorts (at this point I was given a paper witch hat)
The hat wants to apologize, he could not sing, laryngitis
But he kindly wrote down verses for me to recite to us

Unfortunately, today you won't be placed in any houses
Instead you have to sit here and get ridiculed by us louses
The hat is here today to provide you with some special brews
all in the name of escaping those nasty ACT blues.
(Mitch made a bunch of little containers with mysterious 'potions')

First, the hat knows that Victoria and you are always in a tizzy
So during this stressful time here is some calming drought, extra fizzy. (cherry coke)

Tomorrow remember that you are a great coach and you did everything right
The hat is confident your students will flex their test-taking might
After months of wordiness, graphs, strategies, and the pythagorean theorem
The hat would like to reward your hard work with some veritaserum (vodka)
This will force your students to say what they know is true-ish
that it is cool that they have a coach who is quite Jewish.

And although your desk is a vortex of crap
you can always tell me you can find their ACT reports with the Marauder's Map (piece of paper)
And I am sure that tomorrow all your students will show up early in homage to their mentor who too is quite nerdy.

Now I know that you worry that you are not a good junior coach.
On that topic, the sorting hat would like us to approach
He would like to disabuse of this notion
By turning you into the best JCo with polyjuice potion (mix of juices)
But know that something strange and magical it will do
The potion will only succeed in turning you into you!

Excuse me for this rhyme is getting long
But I have to compete with Colin's songs
I guess the only solace for enduring this slog
Is that you will be able to write about it in your blog (done!)

Now the hat wants to leave you with one last parting gift
An elixir that will give you quite a post-ACT lift
It will get you through long into the night
but better keep this one out of LT (leadership team) sight
Just one warning, it is not as sweet as candy
it is a vail of liquid luck, or in other words, Brandy!

We felt so loved!

No time to write for pleasure these days...

So much has happened in the last month +, and I've been too busy to write about it! So many topics are swarming around in my head, but today I think I'll write a little bit about how well I've gotten to know my students in the past few months through their special circumstance essays and my letters of recommendation.

In our organization, we have our students write "Special Circumstance Essays/Letters." Basically, these essays are submitted in addition to all of the other application materials to each college and are meant to give some context to each student. They are supposed to tell the story behind the great or sub-par grades or ACT scores as a way to encourage admissions committees to look beyond the numbers. They might also explain a temporary dip in grades or show schools what obstacles these students have had to overcome and how overcoming those obstacles has uniquely prepared them for college. The things I've learned about my students have been amazing and heart breaking. Here's a dumbed down summary:

- 8 of my students have parents or siblings who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling.
- 7 of my students have been in this country for less than 10 years.
- 11 of them were born outside of the country, most of those are here in the US as refugees
- 5 have parents or siblings with extreme physical disabilities
- 6 have lost siblings or parents in their lifetimes
- 3 have suffered from some sort of depression or anxiety
- 20 have yet to tell me their stories.

Hearing these stories and learning about the situations my students have had to go through has been a profound and overwhelming experience. There is so much pain that I do not think I could ever endure that my students had to experience before they were even in high school. I am amazed that not only have my students survived such hardships, but that they have come out of these experiences stronger and with a fervent desire to go to college and improve their lives. This has shown me that the work that I do is meaningful and worthwhile, and that I cannot picture myself doing anything more important right now.