Dear Friends,
It is hard to believe that we are more than three weeks into this new reality of working from remote locations during this stressful time. At CollegeTracks, we continue to be fully committed to our mission and to being there for our 2,000 high school and college students who need us now more than ever.
Our Access high school students have just begun distance learning and our staff is operating almost round the clock to support them not only to complete their higher education and financial aid applications but also to guide them through these new realities.
Our Success college students are persisting with online courses while at the same time dealing with housing, unemployment, mental health, and other stressors. Like each of us, they are dealing with what the future now holds. Our dedicated Success Coaches are checking in daily with their students about their academic and emotional well-being and providing them with emotional and academic support as well as connections to community resources.
That being said -
We are happy to announce that we will have our Annual Graduation Celebration - Virtually
.
(It was originally scheduled for April 29.) We heard our high school and college students lament how they felt about not "crossing the stage" for their graduation and not being able to celebrate with their family and friends. We know we can't replace the tradition, but we still can celebrate with them, creating positive memories and highlighting their accomplishments.
As we plan these special virtual events for each of our high schools and our Success college students, we look forward to a day when we can look back on this crisis and remember it as a challenge our students overcame, not as the time their academic progress stopped. Please join us in working towards that future, and support our amazing & resilient students today.
After the virtual celebrations are held, we will send you a recap of the graduation events so that you can enjoy seeing the happy faces of our students, their families, and our staff. Each graduation celebration will have a wonderful dose of CollegeTracks spirit and interactive cheer, crowdsourced with ideas from staff and students. Imagine lots of green and white, college paraphernalia, and prizes!
We hope you, your family, and coworkers are doing well, and we hope that you know that we are always here to help you in any way that we can. We will get through these difficult times by pulling together and supporting each other, and by not forgetting those in our community who are least resilient and most need our support.
