Clemente’s freshman team kicked off our first Attendance and Supports Rally of the year this last Wednesday with a bang and a FLIP! City Year corps member David Gueringer MC’d the event and started by introducing just some of the freshman class’ most avid sponsors and advocates. The assembly began by cheering on both Ms. Elenbaas and GEAR UP with our freshman class. Ms. Elenbaas introduced herself as our freshman counselor and let the students know where they could find her on the fourth floor and why they may need the support of a counselor during the year.
After Ms. Elenbaas’ introduction, students learned more about GEAR UP! (Did you know that GEAR UP is an acronym that stands for “Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for UndergraduatePrograms”?) Representatives of this college readiness and tutoring program, Billy Hayes and Yesenia Villalobos, followed Ms. Elenbaas’ lead and came on stage to represent and explain their freshman support position here in Clemente. GEAR UP was also sure to encourage all of the students to fill out their Gear Up surveys to gain insight on students’ current college preparedness and to gain perspective on how to better support the 9th graders throughout the year (plus there was candy thrown by an enthusiastic Wildcat!). Parent surveys should make there way home and provide information that will help support GEAR UP and their goals to get Clemente scholars to colleges of their choosing.
Following these pumped up intros, City Year showed off the exciting attendance initiatives available to the freshman class for coming to school on time, every day! These fabulous prizes range in value from positive phone calls home to say how great a student is doing, raffle tickets for awesome prizes, free lunches, and even game and movie nights thrown for students! A quarterly event for students and parents is even a City Year/Gear Up collaboration. These were all explained to students through a funny game-show City Year named: FLIP IT! Chosen students had to guess the spelled-out rewards for attendance (held by the current City Year team on flipped tiles – a la Wheel of Fortune) in front of the whole auditorium. It was great seeing our freshman class all together in one place and being active participants. The freshman team can’t wait for the attendance incentives to start rolling out – and after this rally, students are excited too!
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