I am extremely excited for this new school year and taking what I learned from my previous year in order to better help our students become college-ready.
As the education advising coordinator, my job at Nevada State High School’s (NSHS) Henderson campus is to help students make the transition from a high school setting to a college one. We are a unique school because our students take REAL college classes on REAL college campuses with REAL college professors. We have a great program designed to help with this adjustment delivered in our Transitions and Study Skills classes—the two courses I teach.
I am most excited to help our students formulate and execute their own personalized plan to achieve their education goals while earning free college credit. It is a great feeling to see our students gain confidence when they are successful in their college classes. So many of our students are nervous about taking on the challenge of college courses, and then to see the transformation take place in them is what fuels me as a teacher. I want all our students to be college-ready and successful in the college setting and provide them with support to be personally, academically, and socially ready for college.
I hope to learn about each of my students’ needs and desires so that I can help them formulate a personalized plan and empower them with a skill set necessary to achieve their goals. I view my teaching style as that of a facilitator, which is why I love teaching at NSHS. The curriculum is designed to help our students develop the critical thinking skills necessary in order to find solutions to their problems or issues which aligns perfectly with my teaching style.
I love seeing what the NSHS program can do for students. Not only does it provide them with opportunities that may otherwise not be attainable for some students, but it empowers students to become more confident in their abilities and better equipped to achieve their college dreams. We have students from all different backgrounds attend our school and to see that they all can be successful in the college environment through the skills that we help them develop through our curriculum is exciting as an educator.
To know that we are helping students save thousands of dollars by providing them with free college credit is also a wonderful feeling. When it clicks for them what it is exactly that they are doing by attending our school makes my job the greatest! I feel privileged to be part of Nevada State High School’s vision to have every student college-ready.
Michele Williams is the education advising coordinator at NSHS’s Henderson campus. NSHS is a dual credit high school for 11th and 12th graders providing a college experience.
