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Please note that our offices will be closed for the holidays from December 18th- January 3rd. We look forward to connecting with each of you in the New Year as we work together to help our students succeed!
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Lets Talk About
Community Service
The Holiday's are a great time for students to earn community service hours. As a reminder, community service hours are one of the requirements for the Bright Futures Scholarship. You can learn more about that scholarship by clicking here!
The way students, counselors and parents access and log community service hours is changing. Student are now encouraged to use the Community Service Ecosystem- Profferfish, an innovative online platform which will change student community service from a reactive process to a proactive journey, and best of all, it's FREE to all Hillsborough County Public School students!
Students that want to create an account, log in their hours and search for future volunteer opportunities, should view the quick start guide or visit profferfish.com.
As always, do not hesitate to reach out to your College Career Counselor for support or designee.
For ideas about potential Community Service locations that are currently accepting volunteers, and following measures to be COVID safe, click here! Some of the service opportunities listed can even be completed from home! As always, please make sure students get the service locations "pre-approved" by their school counselor. This can be be done through Profferfish
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TSIC App is Down for Maintenance
The TSIC App will be down for maintenance from December 20th to January 10th. The App should be live again starting January 11th, you can resume chatting through the App then.
The App will be unavailable for that time because the TSIC State Office will
perform several updates on it, including adding a video feature to the App!
If you have any questions please feel free to contact your College Success Coach!
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MENTOR OF THE MONTH
Pamela Rodriguez
How did you become involved with mentoring through the Hillsborough Education
Foundation?
I started mentoring around six years ago for the Sullivan School where I met my mentee. At that time I knew of someone who was a mentor for TSIC, and when I found out that my mentee had been put forward as a recipient of the Scholarship, it was an easy decision to continue mentoring the student. It is such a worthwhile program and students need the chance to have further education whenever possible.
What has been the most rewarding part of mentoring?
Actually seeing my student develop into a young woman and overcoming issues that many of us have never encountered is so rewarding to me. I think we have a good understanding of one another, and for that I am thankful. It has been a difficult year for students and I tell myself to be cognizant of this fact. My mentee has just started High School, and has been e-learning, which is not easy for a teenager who is fairly social.
What do you believe is the key to being a quality mentor?
The key quality for a mentor is to be a good listener and try not to be judgmental. I am not a teacher, but have 8 grandchildren, all of whom had different needs. No child is the same, and in my opinion each one has great qualities which need to be explored, and encouraged to expand on in his or her life. It is a long time since I was a teenager, decades in fact, so mentoring is certainly a learning experience for myself!!
When you are not working with students, how do you prefer to spend your free
time?
Since Covid19 my traveling to see my grandchildren has been curtailed, and it is unlikely that I will see any of them for many months. However, I do write poems for them, (not very good ones I might add) and try to make contact with the grandchildren as often as possible.
I volunteer at Big Cat Rescue here in Tampa twice a week, working in the Gift Shop, giving classes, and of course visiting the cats! I have been volunteering there for almost 12 years, time does pass by all too quickly.
For quite some time I have made hats for cancer patients, but since Covid19 the hospitals will not accept the hats. So I send them up to Connecticut to my daughter to give to the homeless as the weather is much colder than here in FL.
I read, walk, do crosswords and Tai Chi. Mentoring has been uppermost in my weekly activities for many years. Hopefully, 2021 life will gradually get back to "normal" and my mentee and I will meet face to face once more.
What do you hope your mentee(s) will learn from you?
I am hoping that my mentee will learn from my time with her that hard work is not always easy, but the reward is well worth the effort. Hard work is often a difficult task when the students don't have the tools that many students take for granted.
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Talking to Your Mentee Post Elections
Tips on approaching conversation about election results with young people
The 2020 presidential election was long, challenging, and unlike any other: a global pandemic, police violence sparking renewed calls to action against systemic racism and injustice, and concerns about the future of the United States.
 So much of this has been a challenge for adults to experience and process, can you imagine what it must be like for youth? As mentors, we know our country's young people are experiencing and processing it all along with us. Our role in the coming days isn't much different from our roles as mentors any other day: Be there for young people, sharing space to discuss their feelings and support them as they think about next steps.
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New Florida Senate President Eyes Education Funding
Amid Budget Woes
Facing a $5 billion reduction in estimates of state revenue, Senate President Wilton Simpson warned Tuesday that austerity measures --- including potentially the first public university tuition increases in a decade --- are on the horizon. State economists in August lowered an estimate of general revenue for this fiscal year by $3.42 billion and an estimate for the 2021-2022 fiscal year by nearly $2 billion. General revenue, which includes such money as sales taxes and corporate income taxes, play a vital role in funding schools, health care and prisons. To read more, click here.
Source: News Service of Florida
Quaranteened!
Helping Adolescents Cope with Boredom during COVID-19
Developmentally, adolescents are likely less equipped to effectively identify and cope with boredom. Biological and cognitive changes taking place during adolescence mean they are more likely to seek out rewarding, novel experiences without the more developmentally advanced cognitive controls to act as impulse controls. Situational factors also may serve to create ideal conditions for boredom, especially for adolescents who lack personal agency or feel they experience constraints to desired activities. The COVID-19 context represents a time when, collectively, individual autonomy is undermined. This is especially challenging ...when adolescents typically have more free time.
This combination of more free time, increased social controls, and the developmental need to experience autonomy creates the "perfect storm" for boredom to develop. Due to physical distancing and closure of some recreation facilities, adolescents remain in the same environment day after day which, in turn, becomes less interesting. This, paired with the rapidly changing nature of the pandemic and barrage of communication, may result in adolescents bouncing between under-stimulating home environments and over-stimulating online environments with little face-to-face peer interaction. To read more, click here.
Source: The Chronicle of Evidence Based Mentoring
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The College Success Team
Director of TSIC (813) 463-4283 | Click the name of your assigned College Success Coach to email them.
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College Success Coach
(813) 574-0272
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College Success Coach
(813) 574-0271
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College Success Coach
(813) 574-0264
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College Success Coach
(813) 574-0269
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Mark Your Calendar
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Date
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Event
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Audience
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Dec. 21st -
Jan. 1st
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HEF Office Closed for the Holidays
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Dec. 21st -
Jan. 1st
| Winter Break/Non-Student Days | All Students |
For more detailed information about the events occurring in Hillsborough County Public Schools, click the link below:
For more information, contact Anna Corman via email.
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