Last month, Columbia GEAR UP celebrated National GEAR UP Week in true college style introducing several new projects and activities. We kicked off the week by launching our brand new Columbia GEAR UP website. The website is conveniently linked to the Columbia School District's site.

​

Students and parents can easily navigate to the MS or HS resources tab and then find the GEAR UP link. Our website features answers to basic questions such as “What is GEAR UP?” It also has information on upcoming events, how to contact us, a calendar with upcoming events, news, a photo gallery, resources on college information and even a “meet the staff” page that contains pictures and bios of the staff. Another great feature on our website is the ability for the students to download documents such as field trip permission forms, a feature that makes it easier for the students and parents alike to receive needed information quickly.



Another program we launched during the week that we are very excited about is “College Connection”. College connection is a program ran after school Monday-Thursday until 3:30. College Connection is a unique opportunity for high school students to get information on specific colleges, help on college applications and scholarships or additional tutoring. In its first month, we have already seen students take advantage of this great opportunity.



In honor of National GEAR UP week we took this opportunity to get the students and staff to participate in “College Spirit Wednesdays”. Each Wednesday this year we are encouraging all staff and students to wear their college gear. This can be a T-shirt, sweatshirt or any type of apparel they may have. Even on the first week we had a huge number of students and staff participate and the numbers have been increasingly growing. Many of the staff were really excited to wear shirts from their Alma mater. While we mostly saw shirts from colleges nearby like WSU, UW and University of Oregon we also saw students sporting shirts for colleges such as University of Florida. We feel this is a great way to help continue to create a college bound atmosphere within our high school, not to mention create both a sense of unity and maybe even a little friendly competition in our staff and students.



We further celebrated National GEAR UP week by putting up new bulletin boards in the commons and hallways of the high school. These boards provide important information and serve as a visual reminder about different programs and events GEAR UP offers. Our bulletin board in the commons serves as a reminder as to what GEAR UP is and also advertised our new website and college spirit Wednesdays. The board in the hallway was a visual introduction and reminder of our new “College Connection” program.

​

We finished National GEAR UP week with a class competition at the middle school pep assembly. We developed a simple game like Chutes and Ladders where the students could either move forward or backwards depending on how they did on various tasks that will help them get into college. An example would be, “you completed your FAFSA, move ahead 2 spaces.” While playing the game our Student Achievement Specialist Mr. Copeland would also ask questions related to getting into college like “does anyone know what FAFSA stands for?” Even at the middle school level the kids did a great job of answering these questions. What was really fun for us was to see how much the kids got into the competition and really had a blast with it.



National GEAR UP week at Columbia School District was full of fun and excitement. We are looking forward to carrying out these new programs throughout the rest of the school year!