Byron's Babbles

I have been learning at Harvard University this week on post-secondary success. As an exercise to help myself digest all of the information and make some sense of the learning, I like to come up with a top list from each day. This day’s (Sunday, June 23rd) learning came from Mandy Savitz-Romer and Francesca Purcell, and included learning about post-secondary gaps and opportunities and the data and trends behind public policies to increase post-secondary success.

One of the things that really jumped out at me from the reading and learning was the introduction of the Thriving Quotient. I was very interested in the thought and reality is that we always want to measure student success primarily in terms of academic performance and persistence to graduation. I became enthralled when reading “The “Thriving Quotient”: A New Vision for Student Success” by Laurie A. Schreiner, where she introduced this assessment tool. Thriving students are academically successful and also believe themselves to be part of a community and psychological well-being. These things make it possible for the student to get the most out of their educational experience. The thing I like about Academic Thriving is that it goes beyond what I call compliance – attending class, doing homework – going through the motions. In the Thriving Quotient, Academic Thriving students are psychologically engaged in the learning process. What really resonated with me about this was that the idea of making a connection between what the student already knows or is interested in. This connection to relevant contexts helps the student be an engaged learner and THRIVE.

The Thriving Quotient also includes Intrapersonal Thriving. This thriving is about the student having a healthy attitude toward themselves and the learning process. Additionally included is Interpersonal Thriving. We can’t truly thrive without relationships. So, time spent on the Thriving Quotient and so much other discussion on Sunday led to the following top 20 list of things learned:

1. Learning with and from each other from different sectors.
2. Pull don the walls and step outside our lanes.
3. We have to get the singular narrative out of our mind.
4. Sometimes we are creating a narrative for students that does not fit their why, or what is best for them.
5. Actions of students do not match their aspirations.
6. Only 10% of students that drop out of college had below a “C” average.
7. Student problems vs. institutional problems
8. We highlight student problems, but sometimes instead of highlighting problems, we need to change the process.
9. With multiple pathways available to students, we need to make sure we are sorting in a way that is about best fit, not about other factors.
10. We need to get better at moving from thinking about student success in terms of just quantitative box checking like graduation rates, number of applying or accepted to college, and test scores by moving to the idea of students THRIVING!
11. We can’t think of college as just one singular thing because there are many different outcomes from many different types of colleges.
12. The highest stakes tests students take are the placement tests once in college. Then, in some cases, we waste the students’ time in developmental education.
13. We must find a way to scale up the things that work!
14. A college credential is a solid investment that will pay off over time.
    1. More likely to give back to the community and vote
    2. Higher levels of personal well-being (health, et cetera)
    3. Higher earnings and tax payments
15. What is it that the adult wants, versus what the student wants.
16. Adults always think we know best, but many times we don’t know all the options, or nor does the student know all the options.
17. “College is not for everyone, but it is for everyone that looks like you when you are a school.”
18. We maybe need to think about amending the 14th amendment of our constitution to include higher education.
19. We are nearing universal enrollment in college. What does this mean?
20. A college going future identity.

As you can see, there was a lot to digest after a single afternoon of work. If any of these statements resonated or made you think, please comment here on this post.