Hi, Mentor ! We hope the new school year is off to a great start for you and your mentee. Many of you have already logged several sessions! That's awesome! All active mentors should have received a new Mentor Tool Kit either in the mail or in person if you recently attended training or a Meet & Greet with your new scholar. Section 2 of the new Tool Kit is brand new and has exercises that focus on social-emotional learning.

The past six weeks have been a bit busy around here at Take Stock in Children Pasco. We welcomed 30 new scholars into our program at an official signing event on August 27. We also welcomed six transfer students from other TSIC programs as their families have recently moved to Pasco. So far we have recruited and trained 22 brand new mentors and have many of you to thank for referring a friend or colleague to our program. They are going to be awesome mentors and we are so excited to have them on board. We are grateful so many of our veteran mentors wanted to stick around and take on a new scholar after their previous student graduated this past May. We are so close to having all of our scholars matched with a mentor. See our list below of mentors still needed for four students.

Our College Readiness Coaches have already organized and held workshops for our freshmen and seniors. They've also been out in the field visiting all of the scholars in our program for their first quarterly visit. Thursday they're taking a dozen or more juniors and seniors interested in attending USF on an all-day tour there, complete with break-out sessions specific to their desired field of study.

We attended the 2019 Florida Take Stock in Children College & Career Conference at the end of September to learn new strategies to move our organization forward and help set our scholars up for success. We also celebrated some accomplishments from the past year and we have you to thank for that. More on that at the bottom of this email.

Planning for AIM for Education, our annual clay shoot fundraiser, is in full gear now as that event is just around the corner--Friday, November 22, 2019. ​This annual event is held at Tampa Bay Sporting Clays in Land O’ Lakes, FL and will consist of a sporting clays tournament, lunch, and raffles. 100% of all proceeds from the event will be used for the funding of scholarships and college-readiness services for Pasco County students. We typically raise enough money to fund about 6 or 7 scholarships! If you are interested in registering a team, you can sign up online by clicking here .

When you have about 30 minutes to spare, check out the Lunch & Learn Webinar below that our state office published in August. It is a great refresher course for our mentors and is essentially a condensed training for our new mentors.

Here's a brand new link for the 2019-2020 school year to log your sessions after each visit with your mentee!

Want to learn more about mentoring best practices, tips and resources available to help you launch a great year of mentoring for you and your mentee? Click here to watch at your leisure this 27-minute webinar recorded by Marci Poston, Director of Programmatic & Professional Development Services for the Take Stock in Children state office.

Please note that if you are a school district employee accessing the recorded webinar on the GoToStage platform in a district facility, you might need to log in to ContentKeeper to bypass the internet filter.

The graphic below is shared in the webinar but it's a good one and so we wanted to post it here so you can better read it. We have so many new scholars and new mentors and we are often asked how long it will take for some of these students to feel at ease and participate more fully in the conversation. The first few sessions--maybe several--may feel a bit awkward but please know that every session does count. You are building that trust and rapport with every visit. Use activities from your Mentor Tool Kit to help start the conversation.

On behalf of all of us at Take Stock in Children Pasco, THANK YOU! Our program came home from the annual Take Stock in Children College & Career Conference with not only a Gold award, but also TSIC's top state award--the Luminary Award--for the 2nd year in a row! This would not be possible without our amazing mentors who give of their time and talent week after week to support our scholars and help guide them on the path to success. Pictured from left to right: Gina Granger, Mentor Coordinator; Kayla Conologue, Program Coordinator & College Readiness Coach; Rosanne Heyser, Executive Director; and Nikii Lewis, College Readiness Coach.