Have you ever wanted to travel to somewhere in the world? Probably, I mean who hasn’t? Traveling the world is a great way to meet new people and to experience the life or culture of a country. Many people believe that as a high school student traveling the world is out of reach, but that’s not true! There are many ways to travel the world as a high school student. Such as:
Ever since I was in middle school I have wanted to go abroad to Japan and China. As a freshman my brother was awarded the University of Kentucky’s two week Confucius Institute trip to China. Since his trip, I have had a great interest in China. On the short trip he learned so much about the culture and the people who lived there. While there he was able to see the differences between the people of the United States and those in China as well as the different landscapes, types of buildings, and schools. My brother’s trip abroad to China inspired me to push forward with my dream of going to Japan as well as applying for the China trip. Japan is actually one of the hardest countries to study abroad in. To be eligible you must have a GPA of 3.0 or higher as well as no medical issues and a “healthy” mind. When Japan says their students have to have a healthy mind they mean they must not suffer from ADHD/ADD, Asperger’s, depression, etc. School is very difficult in Japan and they believe that if one does not have a healthy mind they will not be able to handle the school’s difficulty. If the applicant is on any medication this can also make them non-eligible to study abroad in different countries due to the possibility that the prescribed medication may be illegal or unknown in the country. This does not apply to all countries. If you want to know if this applies to you, look online. Usually study abroad programs have this information in the eligibility column. If you are interested in spending your time abroad in another country while continuing your education and don’t know where to start, here are some programs:
One reason that high school students don’t have interest in going abroad is the cost. Money should never be a reason why you don’t go abroad because you can get scholarships through your program, school, or college. Studying abroad is very expensive depending on your program of choice, but there are many ways to save money, such as fundraisers and selling old toys or clothes. Many programs also offer scholarships that can be half merit-based/half financial need, fully merit based and fully financial based. Scholarships can be a huge help in your journey abroad. I have been saving since seventh grade for my China and study abroad to Japan. When applying for my study abroad for Japan, I have made sure I have the best GPA possible to be the most outstanding candidate I can be for scholarships. People who want to go abroad during the school year may have to make sacrifices. As an iLEAD student wanting to go abroad for a year, I would be sacrificing a year of nursing and an associate’s degree. That’s a lot to give up since my goal is to be a nurse as well as have an associate’s degree in biomedical engineering. Others may not have classes or a career pathway that they have to worry about, which is completely fine! Even though the sacrifices for me are huge, it’s worth it to visit the country, experience the culture, and to immerse myself in such a wonderful language I know going abroad is a great way for me and many others to learn about a place, culture, and language. I am the type of person that learns better in the subject when I can experience it. Going to another country by oneself calls for a lot of responsibility. The student or applicant should always be on their best behavior. Many people who go abroad or travel to other countries for a period of time say that the experience is life changing. Their understanding of the world and the people around them is expanded. This year I was accepted to the 2018 University of Kentucky China Trip! I can’t wait to see another part of the world with such a rich and beautiful culture. Hopefully in the future I will get to go abroad to Japan and immerse myself in their culture and language. I know this is something that will be good for my future, as well as help me understand more about the history of the world. This is only the beginning of my wonderful journey. -Kylie Griffey
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When you thought about applying for the iLEAD Academy, you probably told yourself multiple times that it is one of the best opportunities you have ever been given at such a young age. I mean graduating with an associate’s degree in the engineering pathway of your choice, AND your high school diploma? It’s crazy, right? I said the same thing. However, while iLEAD is a great opportunity, there are many things that come along with it that can be quite intimidating and great at the same time.
1. You get to meet so many new people and make new friends. At the beginning of the 2016-17 year, I was completely isolated from everyone. I only knew the people from my home county, and that wasn’t very many. I didn’t know what to do with myself because I wasn’t the smartest, and wasn’t very good at socializing. But of course, the teachers switched it all up. We were put into groups with people from all different counties and I got to make 3 new friends out of that group. iLEAD will also introduce you to very many new teachers and executives from OVEC and from all over the state of Kentucky. I, personally, think that’s the best part about iLEAD. 2. The small environment will get to you at some point. Your elders always tell you, “enjoy your high school years, because you’ll miss them when you get older.” I completely agree with that statement, and that is where iLEAD may hurt you. Yes, you might miss a couple of pep rallies over the years and maybe the occasional powderpuff game. But the small environment is where it’ll hit home. When the dating thing comes along, when gossip starts to spread about others. I watch it happen every single day. If you come to iLEAD, pick out your friend groups wisely and make sure that you, as my mom calls it: “Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” 3. Of course, the associates degree. I’m not in an engineering pathway (nor do I want to be) but I’m still going to graduate with the same amount of education as the students that are taking the engineering classes. As a nursing student, I will graduate with my high school diploma and my RN associates. Do you know how insane that is? I’m just saying, you can’t find an opportunity like this anywhere else, really. I won’t even be 18 when I graduate and I’ll have a nursing license that my own mother doesn’t even have yet. Crazy, right? If you’re iffy about iLEAD, that should be enough to win you over. 4. It is NOT easy. Pretty much any student that goes to iLEAD will tell you that. It’s not easy to stay caught up and complete assignments by the due date, and you probably won’t complete them by the deadline most of the time. You have to be motivated to attend, motivated to do your work, and motivated to get where you want to be in life. Be prepared for many lectures on how much of your effort you can really put forward from Mrs. Gray and Mrs. McKinney, because you’ll be getting plenty of them if you aren’t motivated. I support this statement from experience. 5. You will develop out-of-this-world relationships with your teachers. Some people will beg to differ with this statement, but I support this completely. Gray and Mckinney will probably yell at you constantly, and push you so hard you think you might fall and just give up. Words of advice (and you’ll hear this time and time again,) they are pushing you to be successful. They are the greatest at seeing the best in people, especially me. They are supportive and will pick you up when you fall, and when you’re struggling to run, they’ll push you to the finish line. Mr. Brooks will give you great advice when you have problems in life, and can probably work out any personal problem that you have. Again, I support this statement from experience. 6. If you think you can juggle a lot with iLEAD in the mix, you’re wrong. I play volleyball, 4 instruments, show cattle and have to juggle iLEAD all at the same time. Is it easy? No. Will you lose sleep? At some point, probably. I say this with every ounce of honesty in me: you will want to quit. Because you’re so tired or because you didn’t finish your geometry project, and people are bugging you about your TSA project or something completely irrelevant. But don’t quit, because I promise you, it is worth it. All of these things are things that I have thought about time and time again, and I don’t think that now, I would have things any other way. -Kylie Jo Turner Well, my friend, do you know what you are getting yourself into?
Probably not. The iLEAD Academy is an engineering based school. Not just a freestanding outlet from boring public school. You really have to have the motivation and the will to keep pushing yourself forward, no matter the obstacles you run into. Even a brick wall. Sometimes you just have to keep running into that brick wall to punch through it. Trust me, it is possible. Going to iLEAD Academy, you definitely need to have an idea of the career pathway you want to take (that is an engineering pathway) and grab ahold of it. When I first started, I was trying to push towards Aerospace but did not see a direct pathway set up. Therefore, I just took my Plan B; software development. I do not completely regret my decision, but knowing that if I kept my head up that I could have taken my Plan A really irks me. Have you an idea in mind? Grab it, and never let go. Another thing that I have seen is that the Academy is more than what people have bargained for. Many students have dropped out because of the excessive work and large need for motivation. My dudes, it is an "Engineering based Academy." Of course there is going to be a lot of technical work. Don't like computers? Don't sign up. Don't like to work hard? Walk away. Super stubborn? Your best bet is to work on those social skills and stop butting heads with your peers (but always keep your opinions). Like to work independently, but bounce ideas off of others doing a similar project? Hop on board, we're looking for you! You have to like people, you have to be good with technology, and you have to have a great deal of motivational power in that mind of yours. -RJ Time management. It’s one of the most important skills you will need not only here at iLEAD, but for the rest of your life as well. It is also one of the most difficult skills to learn, and it’s safe to say that there are quite a few students here who struggle with it. In this post, I hope to help those students by giving some tips on how to manage your time.
One thing I do is try to complete one activity per class each day (Pre Test to Quiz). Each one tends to be about 1% of your lesson, so once you complete one per class, you should work on the class you’re furthest behind in! If you’d prefer, you can also spend an hour in each class instead using, a timer on your phone or computer. You probably won’t complete an entire activity, but it may help you to spend time in every class. You also have sticky notes on your computer, and apps on your smart device. You can use them to write down things that you have to remember, whether it’s a due date or a reminder to work on a certain class. They’ll always be there until you delete them, allowing you to see them every day! Use these to your advantage, and if you have a smart device, get creative! There are many apps on the app store that allow you to make custom memos for your home screen. There is also a calendar on both your phone and computer that you can use to set reminders and due dates. These will notify you on whatever day at whatever time you set, further preventing you from forgetting assignments. Lastly, there are also alarms on both your computer and smart device that you can set to go off every weekday at a certain time to remind you to do your Digital Literacy bell ringer. If these don’t work for you, you can always ask a classmate who is caught up in their work for help and more tips on time management. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help!
Being a student at iLEAD can and will be difficult. Classes, transportation, extracurricular activities, and just life in general all bundle together at some point. However, one cool thing about iLEAD? The people and social aura. Every person there is unique in their own way and even by the second nine weeks, I am still meeting new people. Because Sophomores and Freshman from multiple counties are students at iLEAD it leaves room to make new friends… and enemies.
Don’t worry, it’s not as dramatic as it sounds. Some of people at ILEAD are introverted, and others don’t even have friends from their own counties. This leads to a few problems with those people who don’t have anyone to lean on. So as a whole, I propose a challenge. Whether you’re a student at ILEAD, or a curious grandmother reading this; greet someone you don’t know. Each day, either a friendly ‘hello’ or a full conversation. Because whether you have a smaller or larger social life, everyone can benefit from greeting a stranger. Both social aspects have their advantages and disadvantages. At ILEAD, we have a motto “Work hard, play hard.” For those of us who are more outgoing, it can be hard to maintain friendships while keeping up with work, but a lot of us manage. For those who prefer to work alone, it’s difficult to get help if you don’t know who to ask. Greeting new people is still beneficial, because whether you are introverted or extroverted meeting someone can be a great opportunity to develop social skills. All in all, meet someone new each day. Introduce yourself, sit with a new table at lunch, or anything else you can think of. You never know who might be your next boss, friend, or teacher. Why not get to know them before you find out? -Serenity Rogers You may feel there is nothing you can do about stress. You are behind in your math class by quite a bit and your English is getting there. Makerspace Training, online portfolios, digital literacy, and subject projects have ranging due dates.
iLead has a lot of great things about it, but all of those things pile high on the student’s shoulders. Some kids are pulling off 10 credits this year. Some are participating in school events like football games and extracurricular activities such as FBLA and golf. Some of the sophomores are working towards getting a paycheck and studying for their driving test. Some of the freshman who play sports have games until 8 or 9 at night. It isn’t only the students who have pressure on their shoulders though. Teachers have an inbox that goes on for miles, packed with emails from teachers, parents, students and superintendents. They have to ensure that 80 students have transportation to lunch every day. Since the grading scale recently was changed, hours inside and outside of school have been filled with work for the students. Parents have a job to make sure that they can provide for their family and pay all of the bills. They worry about their 15-year-old child thinking about going to college and applying for scholarships. Everyone has stress in their lives, but not everyone knows how to deal with it. Stress can play a part in problems such as headaches, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, skin conditions, asthma, arthritis, depression, and anxiety. There are a lot of strategies to deal with stress. The following are some tips that a quick google search came up with that may help you to cope with stress:
I have struggled with stress for a long time and just recently, I have started working on handling it in better ways. Recently, I opened up and started communicating to a lot more people, both adults and peers. An outlet is something that releases the emotions of someone. I have had the journey of finding mine over the summer and it turned out to be writing and taking pictures of things. I have never been able to keep up with a diary, but having a planner has helped me a lot too. I believe that I am more of a visual person and I need to write things down; for me, a notebook planner is better than a phone calendar. I am still working on not worrying about the small things that I can’t change, but it will always be a work in progress. There are a lot of ways one can deal with stress and I recommend trying to figure out what works for you. For some people, yoga before bed will be good enough for them, but others might need to work on their sleep schedule and their meals. Everyone is different and everyone will cope with stress differently. -Jaci Gaines So we’re halfway through the first nine weeks of school, and the stress is starting to set in. Some students are overwhelmed by the amount of work that’s been thrown at them, and some are even considering dropping out of iLEAD. Granted, our school is not for everyone, and there may always be a few people to go back to their home high school. However, there are some really great kids that could benefit from this academy who are thinking about quitting, and I think they need to be reminded just how incredible this opportunity is.
First of all, a common misconception is that iLEAD is only for engineering students. Freshmen are required to take an Introduction to Engineering course, but after that, they can choose a pathway at the Area Technology Center or stay in the engineering pathway. Just like at regular high school, students at iLEAD are able to choose the classes they take, but how many high schools offer opportunities to build catapults and use them to shoot rotten fruit across the school parking lot? How many high schools take their first field trip of the year to race cardboard boats, go swimming, and have a cook-out? All of our teachers make sure that our field trips are not only educational, but also enjoyable. Last year, we went to the STLP State Competition, VEX Robotics Worlds Competition, Morehead State University, the Louisville Bridge Project, and several other places. Additionally, each student got to take a day off school to job shadow someone of their choice in the career in which they are interested. All of these were wonderful experiences that we might never have gotten at our home high schools. Secondly, our work is self-paced. A lot of students at the iLEAD Academy don’t like having to keep up with so many assignments and work at home, but I feel like they’ve forgotten how boring it is sometimes to sit in class and have to listen to stuff that you already know. In our online classes, we can test out of lessons that we already know. Also, some students say that the work is hard, or that they don’t like the work in general. Truthfully, I have learned that work is going to be hard your whole life. It doesn’t matter if you have the best job in the world, there will still be things you have to do that you don’t like doing. We try to make our school the best it can be, but as Mrs. McKinney says, “Work hard, then play hard.” That’s what it takes to get two years of college credits done before we graduate. We have to get the hard work done before we can do fun things. It’s just part of being responsible and independent. Lastly, the atmosphere of iLEAD is so relaxed. I love coming to school every day because I know that I won’t have to sit in a cold, dark classroom and listen to boring lectures and do busy work. I get to come to a place that’s open and inviting where I can sit independently and do my work in peace; or I can sit with my friends and study with them. Plus, all of the students are just so friendly and nice, and it really feels like we’re a family. I have made so many great friends at iLEAD; better friends than I ever would have made at my home high school because I feel like I fit in here. Sure I had to leave some of my other friends when I came to this school, but it was worth it. The iLEAD Academy can be very challenging at times, but overall, it’s an amazing opportunity for any student who wants to be successful. I hope struggling students will realize all of the benefits they would be missing out on if they stayed in their home high schools, and I hope some will choose not to give up, because it would be disappointing to lose a member of the family. -Laura Duke School is in full swing. We’re about two weeks in now, a new class of Freshmen (and a new teacher) are settling in to the expectations, how difficult this will be, and in general, what ‘normal’ looks like on a daily basis here at iLead (is there such a thing?). As many of you know, this is my first year here at the academy, and it has been an adventure thus far. The culture is inevitably different, and for the freshmen students (and teacher) lessons are being learned.
To name a few for iLead newbs: 1. Cardboard boats DO float! (at least for a little while). 2. A pool party with your entire school (including teachers) might be the best way to start the school year, ever. 3. Edgenuity is not always super fun. 4. …by extension, life is not always “super fun.” 5. Sometimes in life, you will have to do things that are not “super fun” to get what you want out of life. 6. Don’t “reverse engineer” things you can’t put back together…especially Mr. Brooks’ watch. (Cough, cough, Jaci) 7. When you get behind on your work, it will not magically disappear. It will only painstakingly begin to diminish through very, very, focused, hard work. 8. Work hard first so you can play hard later. 9. Sometimes trying to get your work done AND sit with your friends doesn’t mix. 10. Food hidden under beanbags does not keep. The aforementioned lessons were all learned by experience. Some of them more fun than others, but learned nevertheless. Some of us here are still learning some of these, but the fact is, everyone who succeeds has learned at least a few of the bigger lessons listed here: like the necessity of doing hard things to get what you want out of life, or working hard and playing hard, or that one about hoarding food… I will rarely be directly contributing to this blog post in the future. We’re turning it over to the kids. I hope you’ll check it out often to stay in touch with what they’re saying about life here at the academy. -Brooks |
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May 2017
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