University of Mississippi Campus Tour
When I taught 12th grade English, college was at the forefront of the mind of every one of my students. They wondered if they would get in, if they would pass, where they would go, and what they would do if college was not an option. I was so proud when 65 of my 72 seniors were enrolled in college at the end of the year; however, I learned by December of that same year, that fewer than 30 of those students were still enrolled for their second semester. I remember feeling frustrated and helpless — feeling that there was something I did not do to prepare my seniors to not only get in to college, but to succeed in college. This mindset is something I brought with me when I began teaching 7th grade.
It is not unique to be a teacher preparing her students for college — but how do you get 12- and 13-year-olds to see college as a real, accessible goal? In his book Yardsticks, Chip Wood (2015) describes these middle-school-aged adolescents as “excited about the possibilities of the teenage years, about new freedoms and informal rites of passage” (p. 156) while at the same time being “withdrawn and sensitive, tentative and hesitant” when it comes to their academics and schoolwork (p. 158). It is up to me to harness the excitement my students have about the aspects of getting older they are excited about, while also motivating them to do the work that it takes to get there.
With this in mind, I decided to use my connections at my alma mater, the University of Mississippi, to turn a normal college tour into an interactive college experience. Ole Miss is about an hour and half bus ride from our school, which makes it an easy school to go and visit out-of-state in a day. However, like many universities, campus tours are generally reserved for high school and community college students—and even then, unless it is a college preview day, the tour is fairly limited. According to the University Communications website (2019), “A campus visit entails an information session conducted by an Admissions Counselor, a campus tour led by Ole Miss Student Ambassadors, as well as a housing tour of one (1) traditional hall and two (2) contemporary halls*. Each activity is typically 45-60 minutes in length.” Our entire traditional tour lasted 30 minutes and included briskly walking through a few buildings nearby the student affairs office. If I were a middle school student and this was the only insight gained to the university, I would have had very little interest in the school. However, because of my work at the S. Gale Denley Student Media Center and my place in the Ole Miss Hall of Fame, I was able to extend our campus visit a bit further. They had the opportunity to meet and talk with professors and college students, as well as to explore some of the extra-curricular activities the university has to offer, including the TV station, radio station, and newspaper.
My students left campus feeling like they had experienced a small taste of what college can be like. Additionally, I was able to teach my students how to go about finding campus opportunities outside of the classroom, so they can identify areas of interest for themselves when they walk onto campus as freshmen in a few years.
References
University Communications. “Office of Admissions: Visit.” Office of Admissions, The University of Mississippi, 2019, admissions.olemiss.edu/visit/.
Wood, Chip. Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom, Ages 4-14. Center for Responsive Schools, Inc., 2015.
Logistics and Planning
My first task in planning my students’ visit to the S. Gale Denley Student Media Center was confirming the times and date with Patricia Thompson, Assistant Dean of the Student Media Center. To the right, see the email communication* I had with her in arranging the visit. The largest hurdle was arranging for smaller groups to come on a rotational basis in order to accommodate the 110 students we brought on the visit.
Ultimately, we came to the agreement of bringing two smaller groups. Each group was able to hear from college students who work at the newspaper and magazine, as well as two university professors who volunteer their time at the media center. The students were able to ask questions, observe the construction and design of the newspaper, interact with the NewsWatch TV station set, and listen to the student announcers on the radio.
*This email thread is in order from top to bottom; however, some email excerpts have been removed due to the personal nature of their content. Pat Thompson is a personal mentor and friend, and some content was excluded from this snapshot due to lack of relevance to the student visit.
Student Preparation
I used the PowerPoint presentation to the left to prepare students for the trip to the University of Mississippi. During the lesson, students learned about what they can do now as 7th grade students, to start preparing for college, as well as some of the historical and cultural facts about Ole Miss. Students then completed a web quest to explore careers, academic programs, and extra-curricular activities that might interest them. The goal of this lesson was for students to start picturing themselves in college—and to start thinking about what they can do now to make that picture a reality in the next few years.
Campus & Media Center Tour
During the formal campus tour, seen in photos one and five to the right, the students were led across most of the campus, with major buildings pointed out and historical references explained. The students were able to walk through the historic Lyceum and learned about the school’s segregationist history while standing at the James Meredith Statue. They were also able to see the Grove, Walk of Champions, and Student Union — all pillars of the Ole Miss campus. The formal tour ended at the Rebel Market in the Johnson Commons for lunch.
The next leg of our visit was the S. Gale Denley Student Media Center, where my middle schoolers were able to interact with college students and professors, as well to experience small aspects of the Daily Mississippian newspaper, the NewsWatch TV station, and Rebel Radio. In photos two and four to the right, different groups of students pose on the set of NewsWatch, where they took turns reading off the teleprompter and seeing the background mechanics in the control room. A few students even got a chance to play “weather man” with the green screen, as seen in photo 3 to the right.
While the initial interest in going to the media center was “to see were Ms. Roland used to work” or to have another thing to do on the trip, many of the students expressed a fascination with the media center and the fact that there was so much to do outside of the classroom in college. My students were excited about going to college—not just because they felt they were supposed to, but because they wanted to experience it.
Student impact & reflections
Overall, I felt the interactive nature of this visit had a larger impact on my students than simply walking through a college and listening to someone lecture them about different buildings and historical facts. While some students definitely walked away excited to be a college student because of the dining options, more of my students walked away saying, “I’m going to work at the TV station when I’m in college,” or “I can’t wait to join the soccer team when I’m here.” The students learned about the college’s history and saw the buildings, but more than that, they began to picture themselves as college students. Their eyes were opened to the possibilities, and they learned how to become involved in different student groups an organizations.
To the right, you can see student samples of the post-tour survey. These surveys yielded fairly similar results, with students identifying the media center and the cafeteria as high points of their trip. One class, however opted to “interview” each other about the campus tour because of their experience in the media center. Listen to the “Student Reflection Interview” at the top right of this section to hear about one student’s experiences.
While listening to my students interview each other showed me how much they learned and took away from the campus visit, the simple fact that they wanted to conduct interviews and record each other showed me the impact a simple trip through a building can have. My students were already starting to expand their toolkits and advocated for themselves to be more creative in how they answered simple survey questions.