This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
11/09/2016 08:15 AMHow much do you really know about taxes or financial planning before heading off to college? Probably not that much, but three Guilford High School (GHS) students are working to change that through a series of life-skills workshops focusing on topics that include financial planning, college social life, and employment.
Alexis Wainer, Conrad Poole, and Claire Dinauer, all GHS seniors, recently created a series of crash course life-skills workshops designed to prepare students for life after college. The project began as a part of a contest at the Rotarian Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) where the three students were asked to come up with a project that could be created in their backyard and then turned into a reality. After winning the contest, the students partnered with the Women & Family Life Center to turn the project into a reality.
Wainer said these workshops give students skills they don’t learn in the classroom.
“We have the running joke where we know what the powerhouse of a cell is, but we don’t know how to file taxes,” she said. “Once [you] graduate high school, you are either going off to college or you are going into the work force and you are basically going to be on your own and none of us know how to deal with what taxes are or what is good credit or what are the social problems you might face in college—school never actually prepared us for that.”
The workshops are designed to fill a void in current education. Dinauer said there used to be an elective focused on life skills, but it was cut their freshman year. She said these workshops give students like them more information about the real world.
“I still know people in their 30s who tell me ‘I know nothing about taxes — my parents still do them for me,’” she said.
There are currently six workshops scheduled over the next several months. The first workshop took place on Nov. 1, focusing on getting started in college. Upcoming workshops focus on banking, employment, college, personal safety, and life on your own.
Poole said they are bringing speakers in for each session, including representatives from Guilford Savings Bank, current college students, and a self-defense instructor, but he hopes to see the audience get involved in the conversation as well.
“We really want these workshops overall to be interactive,” he said. “We don’t want somebody lecturing the whole time. For example, for our personal safety workshop, maybe people would be able to run through some scenarios and how they could react if necessary.”
Wainer said this program is something she hopes will continue after they graduate, and maybe even become part of the GHS curriculum.
“I hope [school administrators] make it into a class because what we are trying to teach people in 90 minutes needs to be taught more than 90 minutes,” she said. “It is more than what you learn in a textbook. You want to hear from multiple sources and get multiple perspectives and I think that is what we are doing.”
Rotarian Al Jacob and Women & Family Life Program Director Wendy DeLucca helped support the students and provided some speaker contacts for the workshops, but DeLucca said this was really led by the students looking to learn more beyond the classroom.
“The thing I took away from one of our first meetings is that in a very acclaimed, high-scoring town like Guilford, we have student leaders who are saying that their school staff are not necessarily able to provide them all the info that they need, especially about the college part,” she said. “Maybe these are just things you can’t get from a guidance counselor or a school teacher, you have to get them from people who are either college students or people who are out in the field.”
The next workshop, focusing on banking—the subject all three students said they are most excited for—will be held Tuesday, Nov. 15 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the GHS Library. For more information on the workshops and upcoming dates, visit www.womenandfamilylife.org/high-school-workshops.