Adopting Futures, Rocking Realities

Last week was really busy, as it tends to get in the spring.  Two  events sponsored by the Sun Prairie Business Education Partnership  had a great impact on me. The first was “Reality Rocks” on Wednesday.  This event requires about 50 community members creating a simulation of what it is like to live independently after school.  Juniors and seniors are assigned careers and life situations and then navigate paying taxes, finding a place to live, dealing with childcare, investing, maintaining transportation, and all the things one has to balance to live successfully.  These ‘stations’ are run by community volunteers, sometimes business people in their own field (e.g., real estate, investments) and sometimes just helping on that day, like Sarah Heck and I did renting apartments.  I enjoyed seeing the “ahas” on our kid’s faces as they realized what it takes to live.  Why one should not have children until one is financially settled.  What it will be like when mom and dad don’t pay for the cell phone plan.  How balancing a checkbook/ debit account is a survival tool, not just a math problem. However, the greatest impact on me personally came from talking to our students going through the process.  While “renting apartments,” I had the chance to ask many seniors about their plans after high school.  Our youth are so thought-full about where they are headed!  Most are able to articulate what they want and, more importantly, why.  I met kids with dreams of everything from auto mechanics to actuaries, pilots to police officers, foreign service officers to food service workers. One young man passionately dreams of opening the first Honduran restaurant in Madison!  Another thing,  our Sun Prairie young people are so polite and thoughtful.  Parents, the community and our schools are rightfully  proud to have helped bring these young people to this place of being “ready to launch.”  I think this was an awesome experience for our students, and for me it was a really inspiring snapshot of our children’s futures.  If you can, you should volunteer to help next fall when it happens again.  Contact Nancy Everson at nmevers@spasd.k12.wi.us for more information.

The next day happened to be the Annual Meeting of the Sun Prairie Business Education Partnership (BEP).  Members of this group (over 70 businesses) are awesome builders of community. While paying a small membership fee, most importantly, they provide hundreds upon hundreds of hours of time working programs you may have heard of like Adopt-a-Classroom, Reading Buddies, Quarterly Recognition for student achievement, and Breakfast of Champions.  You can learn more at http://sunprairiebep.com/. One highlight of the meeting  were speeches given by two seniors who are recipients of the Adopt-a-Future Scholarship: Vicky Mickelsen and Chenmua Yang.  Adopt-a-Future identifies deserving 5th grade students and then monitors their progress each year, making sure they stay on track to graduate.  If they meet all criteria each year, graduates are presented with a $1000 scholarship provided via the BEP by a generous business or community contributor.  Currently, there are about 15 students in the Adopt-a-Future pipeline.  Vicky’s and Chenmua’s remarks about the journey through our schools were inspiring and moving.  I thought everyone who cares about youth and/or education should read them, so here are links to the text of their remarks: 

 
Link to Vicky's remarks

Link to Chenmua's remarks

I am so grateful for groups like the BEP that mobilize the community to support our children’s education.  I am so thankful for our school personnel who serve children, assisting them in learning and development into such quality young people ready to take their place in life beyond high school.  I am so proud of our students who engage with these opportunities to achieve their dreams.   

You rock, Sun Prairie!

Thanks for Sharing a New View for our Children’s Future

I’ve always been overwhelmed with the generosity of our community.  Whether it is supporting public schools, service clubs, churches, community initiatives (e.g., Sunshine Place and Suppers) with dollars, time, talents, or enthusiasm, this community truly models the spirit of giving and building.  It is no surprise that so many of our children become involved in many types of service through their schools and other ways.

A recent contribution from one of the “builders” of community actually came from a Town of Sun Prairie farmer, Mr. Jerry Bradley.  Mr. Bradley gave our schools a gift of connections to the future.  He arranged for a group of Sun Prairie administrators, counselors, and teachers to visit with staff members at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at the University of Wisconsin.  Now I have been to many events and meetings at the U.W. before, but this was the first time in my experience many members of an entire College met with us to provide an overview of the present and future awaiting our students.

There was a lot of learning, but perhaps the most powerful lesson for me was how the integration of agricultural themes throughout the sciences is creating many opportunities for our children’s future.  CALS has 25 majors ranging from microbiology to food science, to genetics, to entomology, to environmental science (the newest), to plant pathology. See http://www.cals.wisc.edu/ for full information.  Many of these majors have job placement rates from 80 to 100%…even with just a bachelor’s degree.  Some have companies waiting for the graduates.  These applications of science, versus simply graduating with a generic major such as biology, are what seem to drive this College.  They are also seeing many students who want applied science as preparation for medical, veterinary, or other graduate schools (the other alternative being the much larger College of Letters and Sciences).  When we asked what they wanted from our graduates, they responded they want great science literacy and math skills on which to build.

Our task will be how to build on this connection, particularly as we consider how to build our local agriculture program and, perhaps more importantly, integrate it into the sciences. Another challenge is how we can better communicate these types of options for the future to our students as they select classes and make decisions such as choosing colleges within universities.  Certainly the U.W. is not the answer for every student, but the perspective of integrating and applying sciences into specific career fields is applicable to all learning and what we focus on when we look at the very important field called "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).

So, we wish to thank Jerry Bradley for investing his time, enthusiasm and contacts (and even driving us to the campus!)  His thoughtful generosity has created a new connection that will improve what our schools can do for our children.  And he taught me a few things about Sun Prairie history and no-till farming, along the way.

Stay InspirED,

Tim Culver