Years ago, a mentor said – if you take one step toward your goal every day, you will see progress. Daily. One step forward. Those words continue to propel me forward as I choose to either break progress OR make progress. Today, at Opportunity Scholars, part of a Coach’s role is to help students make progress. Support can mean helping a student or family understand why a post-secondary education is important to their future goals, it can mean one of our coaches giving extra encouragement as the student heads off to an interview or teaching students how to advocate for themselves. And sometimes, support means having conversations with families when their students are veering completely off course. In each one of those conversations, our goal is the same - inspire hope, provide support and ensure the student knows they have the responsibility to make progress. Recently a family was in our office to discuss how the student could get back on track. We discussed what great performance looks like. We developed a plan with the student and family that included specific actions the student needed to complete and how Opportunity Scholars could support. We developed a timeline and we told the student they needed to take a step every single day to make progress.
If you were to ask me today, what is the key to Opportunity Scholars success, I would tell you it is the coaching (both for success and for improvement) that helps our students make progress and it’s progress that is life changing.
Wishing You Great Progress in 2024 ~ Rachel Schaefer, CEO
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