Encouraging middle school students to begin exploring their college and career options provides them with a wealth of valuable information. Such explorations give students early insight to help guide them in the choices they make in high school, and they can even begin opening doors to college and career choices where students have identified a strong interest or inclination.
Staff members at Bayfield Middle School have become regional leaders in the effort to foster an increased focus around college and career readiness at the middle school level, and this fall BMS Counselor Nicole Machallister and Career Exploration teacher Poul Heminger took a group of students on a whirlwind two-day tour of University of Colorado campuses in Boulder and Colorado Springs. The trip was paid for, in part, by a School Counselor Corp Grant from CDE.
“The whole purpose of the grant in rural communities is getting college and career readiness exposure at the middle school level,” Machallister said. She noted that Bayfield High School students have long been able to get into pathways and take college classes or participate in internships to prepare them for college and career. This grant is helping the school district expose students to those options even earlier.
“We’ve started exploring what that all means at Bayfield Middle School, and this grant has allowed us to participate in a variety of experiences,” she stated.
The grant was submitted by Steve Otter, the Counselor Corp Grant Coordinator for San Juan BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services), which serves the Archuleta County (Pagosa Springs), Bayfield, Dolores, Dolores County (Dove Creek), Ignacio, Mancos, Montezuma-Cortez, and Silverton school districts.
“Our San Juan BOCES applied for a Colorado Department of Education grant through the School Counselor Corps Grant Program, and Bayfield is one of our member districts,” Otter reported. “This grant was written to increase awareness in middle schools specifically for career-connected learning opportunities. That’s what this program was specifically focused on, and since it is a school counselor grant, our liaison is the school counselor in the middle school. The universities and colleges want to support middle school visits, and Nicole did all of the legwork on this.”
He explained that the objective of the grant is to specifically support districts in building a career exploration program for students at the middle school level. That also means increasing family engagement in the process at an earlier stage so students are better prepared to start thinking about career and postsecondary options when they enter high school.
“We like to set our kids up as they transfer from middle school to high school to really take advantage of a variety of options,” Otter stated. “We want to give them a jump on learning about themselves and what they are interested in pursuing, and that really helps connect them to their high school program.”
“We want our kids as they enter high school to be open to a ton of different possibilities,” Machallister agreed.
A lot of that work is done in the career exploration class taught by Heminger to the majority of the school’s eighth-graders, but the grant did not provide enough funding to cover expenses for that many students, so Machallister consulted with the rest of the team in determining which students would be selected to make the trip. She said they tried to identify students whose prior exposure may have been limited or those who might be first in their family to go to college.
“We thought about students who maybe needed a little extra motivation or who hadn’t left the Bayfield area,” Machallister said.
“She identified kids who hadn’t really thought a lot about college for the future,” Otter confirmed. “She actually developed the weekend with lessons for students around how you can afford school and engage with financial opportunities through academics and athletics and things like that.”
A total of 19 students ended up making the trip, accompanied by Machallister, Heminger and one parent. They were able to experience the lifestyle of college at both CU Boulder and UCCS — including facility tours and dining hall dinners.
“We did an engineering project that was put on by female engineers, and that was powerful, and we had a student panel at CU Boulder and they were first generation students,” Machallister said.
They were also able to attend a Division I volleyball game in Boulder and unwind at the Campus Rec Center in Colorado Springs.
“The colleges really set us up to have a great experience,” BMS Principal Marcia Hoerl said.
“The trip helped our students understand what the college atmosphere is like, and what the expectations are for college students,” Heminger reported. “The experience of this trip was very informative and overall exciting for our students. I would say that introducing these university field trips to our eighth-grade Career Exploration students is an incentive and motivation before entering high school.”
“The students were talking about it at a group activity after we returned, and I’ve had parents tell me that it continues to be a great motivator for their student,” Machallister confirmed.
As part of the exercise, the students were also required to do a research project.
“They compared and contrasted both campuses, and they were to write a paragraph on if they had to choose between the two, which one, and what made the choice for them,” Machallister described. “For me, the most exciting piece was hearing kids talk about the difference in campuses.”
“They came back talking about things we hadn’t ever heard from middle schoolers,” Hoerl confirmed.
“One student told me that their intent was to apply to the engineering program at Boulder…and that they would get in,” Machallister smiled. “One of the kids answered in the post-survey that they don’t see themselves going to college, and that’s okay too.”
The rationale behind the grant includes the belief that allowing students to explore career clusters in middle school better prepares them to choose CTE or career pathways that align with their strengths, aptitudes and interests when they enter high school. High schools in the region offer access to a diverse selection of relevant pathways, and the goal of the grant is to encourage middle school students to fully access the pathways and programs offered in high school.
That message was echoed by the college students the Bayfield eighth-graders met on their visits to the two schools.
“I was extremely grateful to our administration because this was a big trip, and we showed kids that what they’re doing now matters,” Machallister said. “Students (at CU and UCCS) were telling our kids that it has to start freshman year. You have to be on track, and have to be doing your work.”
If funding can be secured to continue these trips in the future, she hopes to make that message even more meaningful by utilizing local connections on the campuses.
“My hope in the future, when we continue this trip, is to work with the high school to get in touch with Bayfield High School graduates at those schools to do a joint activity with them,” Machallister said.
While a limited number of eighth-graders were able to attend last month’s trip to the front range, the grant has been used to provide assistance in making a number of trips closer to home that are available to a greater number of students.
“We’re supporting Fort Lewis College visits for middle school students, and that is something that is easier to send more kids to,” Otter said, indicating that the grant pays for travel and lunch at the cafeteria for such visits. “From a sustainability standpoint, we have worked to make them as cost-effective as possible for the school districts.”
The students in Heminger’s class will also have an opportunity to visit Pueblo Community College to check out their trade programs, and a group is slated to visit Mercy Hospital in the near future to explore careers in that realm.
“We’ve identified students who are possibly interested in the health care field, and we’ve partnered with Common Spirit and have a job shadowing event coming up,” Machallister said.
“By doing these trips, I hope the students can set new goals for themselves heading into the next four years of high school,” Heminger said.
This is the third year of a four-year grant cycle which began with design and implementation in the first two years, according to Otter. The trip to the college campuses is part of a focus on helping students and families through the eighth-grade to ninth-grade transition, but there is much more involved in the effort.
Otter said Machallister’s communication back to parents to encourage involvement and parent guidance on course selection in the first year at the high school is a key to helping students succeed, and he commended her and the team at BMS for being purposeful about making sure that learning connections exist between their building and Bayfield High School.
“You guys have a lot of really great energy in your district around this,” Otter said. “Nicole is a real peer leader in our region with other middle schools, and it is really enjoyable to work with her.”
He is also excited that the grant has provided a small stipend to assist Heminger in developing additional career-connected lessons that are being included in the curriculum.
“The eighth-grade career exploration course that Poul runs is so cool that we brought all of the middle school counselors from the region to Bayfield Middle School to check it out in September,” Otter described. “We invited Poul to lunch with us, and the teachers and counselors were able to ask him questions.”
Information provided by Otter revealed that a study from the Institute of Education Sciences has shown that students enrolled in career-technical education or career-connected pathways are more likely than non-pathway students to graduate from high school on time. They are also more likely to enroll in postsecondary education within two years of their expected high school graduation year, and Machallister and the staff at BMS have also started to utilize a college and career readiness platform called SchoolLinks that starts connecting students to potential pathways.
She explained that students are actually building their profiles in sixth-grade, and by eighth-grade their accounts include resumes and results of mock job interviews that are part of Heminger’s class. In high school, test scores and workforce readiness pieces are added, and students are looking at colleges and taking virtual tours. In the process they are making connections with the right people to help them move along their pathway.
“That’s been a nice process for us with the high school,” Machallister said, noting that events like the trip to Boulder and Colorado Springs would also be included. “My goal is having the students put in their college reflections so when they are a senior and are applying to colleges, they can have access to these visits that they’ve done in middle school.”