Achieve Your High School Success- Action Plan – Mentor

Participate in Class
Students who participate in class are more engaged in their learning and are better able to remember information.  Participating also leads to expanding your brain power and finding your voice.  And this does not mean being rude or interrupting the teacher.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel you participate in class?

What do you think you could do differently if you realize you should participate in class more?

Take Good Care of Yourself
Getting enough sleep, eating well, and taking good mental care of yourself are all necessary to success. When any one of these fall by the wayside, you are unable to perform at the peak of your ability no matter how prepared you are otherwise. Put yourself first to ensure that you’re capable of following through on the rest of your commitments.

What is one thing you can do to make sure that you are taking good care of yourself?

Find Your Passions
Students who can identify their passions and pursue them are more engaged and motivated to succeed. Experiment with different extracurricular activities and pursue the activities that truly interest and fascinate you. 

What are you passionate about?  (Football, soccer, band, theater, debate, etc)
Are you involved in your passion?
How can you get more involved?

It’s Okay to Say NO
Of course you’d like to chair the homecoming committee, run a fundraiser for the food pantry, and tutor your friend for the Spanish AP exam. If you do all of these things, though, will your other commitments suffer?  Successful students know how to say no in a way that is both graceful and humble. Saying something along the lines of “Thanks so much for thinking of me, but I don’t think I have the time to do justice to such an important role right now. Please do check in again, though,” lets people know that you appreciate the opportunity and might be available sometime in the future.  Of course, you cannot tell your teacher “No, I don’t want to do that homework.”

What is something you should have said NO to in the past that made you feel overwhelmed?

How can you handle a similar situation next time, and say NO so you are not overwhelmed?

Earn Leadership Roles
Instead of spreading yourself thin and participating in many activities, try to focus on a few and advance to leadership roles. Successful students know that this focus and determination sets you apart more than simply a commitment to attend many weekly meetings.
How many activities do you participate in throughout the school year? 
Do you think it is too many or too few?    
What could you do to work on earning a leadership role within a certain activity?

Build and Use a Support Network
Successful students are those who know how to use the resources available. Build strong relationships with teachers and peers.  And get the most out of the opportunity to have in this Toyota Mentoring Program.
How can you build and use your support network?

What does success in high school mean to you?

Set Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
A short–term goal is a goal that is designed to be completed in a short period of time. Typically, short–term goals span a few days or a few weeks and never last longer than six months. Long–term goals span longer periods of time and can take six months or longer to complete.

List one Short Term Goal

Time Management 
Time Management is sticking to study schedules, developing systems of organization that work well for you, and learning how to multitask.

Write down one thing that is hard for you do, for example, getting to school on time, completing an assignment on time, finding time in the evenings to study.

Now with your table, come up with 1 or 2 things you can do differently to help you tackle the above task by using time management.

Select a Balanced Course Load
If you commit to the most challenging classes and then load up on challenging electives on top of it, you might overextend yourself, and your grades could suffer. On the other hand, if you don’t take on a course load that is challenging enough, you might feel bored, or find yourself with limited options when it comes time to apply to colleges.  Freshman year is a great time to experiment with what works best for you.

How many classes are you enrolled in right now? 
How many of these classes are challenging (AP, Pre-AP, etc)?
Do you feel overwhelmed with your course load?
Do you feel bored with your course load?
What do you think would be a good balance of challenging classes and less challenging classes?

Be Active Outside the Classroom
Get involved with issues that impact your student experience. Educate yourself about the issues facing your community and learn to use your voice productively so that people will listen to your ideas.  Have you thought about volunteering?  Or joining an organization at school that gets you involved in the community? 

What can you do be active outside of the classroom, that you would find interesting?