One Goal Preparing Clemente Juniors
College preparation is one of the main themes of Roberto Clemente Community Academy as well as the IB Curriculum. It is important that we as a school are preparing our students for success when they leave us and move on to the next step. For a student to have success in college they must have been pushed and molded so they are on par or better than their fellow classmates. Another thing that must happen for student success is exposure to the college application process. Many CPS students will be the first one in their family to go to college, therefore they do not have the same background knowledge as students whose families have a history and culture of going to college….Clemente takes pride in educating and preparing its students to offset any obstacles they could be facing and put them on as equal footing as any student in the country.
One of the ways that Clemente prepares its students is the One Goal class. One Goal is a class that literally has one goal, and that’s college graduation. In a nation where only 9% of low income children graduate from college, One Goal can boast 77% of its students who stay in the program for all 3 years graduate from college! This is done by making sure that their teacher, also called their Program Director, leads them through a curriculum that focuses on not only applying to colleges, but also to work on soft skills that will make them a more presentable candidate while they are applying to colleges and looking at what College Admissions Officers are specifically looking for.
In this activity, students are imagining that they are College Admissions Officers. They are then looking at 5 applicants and answering specific questions about what makes them a good candidate and what deficiencies they could have. They will then gather in groups and discuss which of the 5 candidates is the best one and why. This assists students in analyzing what things they need to do to ensure that they are the most attractive candidate to the colleges that they are applying to.