Launching Success Starts at Lunch

While Lunch Clubs may appear like a simple concept, at CS 111Q we supplement our clubs with Success Mentoring. Not only do we facilitate fun and engaging activities for our scholars, we also have check in time to promote attendance successes. While I have Success Mentees in all grades, Pre-K is a particular joy to work with because the students are very engaged with the clubs. They also are enthusiastic to track their own attendance progress.

Working with Pre-K has given me the opportunity to observe student growth and milestones achieved throughout the year. While there have been many great moments watching these students progress, I believe the moments detailed below are some of the most important building blocks to them launching successfully as they begin their academic journey.

Introducing our students to their Lunch Club was a great success. Pre-Kindergarten to Second Grade clubs are arts and crafts focused, and I cohost them with Zone 126 Home Visitor and Classroom Aid, Ms. Regine Joachim. Students were selected based upon 85-90% attendance to participate in the clubs throughout the year.

The introduction of attendance tracking sheets for students was a small but significant victory. While we had been following students all along using online tools and recordkeeping, creating the logs was a great way to help the students visualize their own attendance. Students were presented with the logs during Lunch Clubs and check-in’s, and were awarded prizes after two unbroken weeks of perfect attendance. In this way, we were able to make attendance translatable to our young, Pre-K students. They were able to observe patterns in their attendance, and were eager to report their presence to us each day.

Another personal highlight was observing one of my Pre-K Success Mentees achieve perfect attendance for the month of April (pictured here with his log). While awarding him his prizes and certificate was great, the best moment was showing him his name on the Perfect Attendance Scholar bulletin board.

Even as students age 5 and under, they have an awareness and a pride in their own progress. We see it in their club work, we see it in the hallways, and we see it as they hurtle towards their Pre-K graduation ceremony. While we strive to make the greatest possible impact, we are only a small piece of our students’ stories, and we look forward to seeing what happens next.