The Next Gen of Helping First Gen College Students

Polk RISE! Program Prioritizing Early College Preparation Through Relationships and Roadmaps

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALLIE BRINTON

At a gathering at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, the mother of a 9th-grade student discreetly walked up to Katie Marsh and quietly posed a question to the longtime counselor who is a college navigator for the district’s newly implemented Polk RISE! Program.

“My daughter really wants to be a writer…but I’m afraid she's never gonna be able to actually earn any money. Do you have any ideas? What kinds of jobs are out there other than just writing the great American novel?” 

Marsh smiled and responded: “Well, I think I’ve got a mentor for you…”

She scheduled a meetup at a local coffee shop where Marsh’s daughter—a business writer who runs a small business—shared with the high school freshman and her mom all the different ways to make a career out of writing in the modern marketplace. 

“That student left that meeting saying, ‘Oh my gosh, there are so many more ways other than just writing the great American novel’—and there’s nothing to say she can’t write the great American novel—but she also will need to put food on her plate,” Marsh says. “And it helped mom feel very comfortable.”

Marsh’s daughter made the commitment to mentor the aspiring writer for the remainder of her high school career, an example of what the district hopes to see organically happen through this new program.

Polk RISE! is born out of the reality that most parents care deeply about their children’s futures, but they may not know how to best assist them on the journey because it is uncharted territory for them.  

“Students who don’t come from families where they had a college attendee may believe it’s unattainable because there’s no one in their household, potentially, advocating for that or who can help them with that,” says Polk County Public Schools Superintendent Fred Heid.

Polk RISE! is designed to specifically assist students who show academic prowess and potential, who have caregivers who have not earned a four-year college degree and who are part of a household that qualifies for free or reduced lunches.

The program began last school year under the leadership of Deputy Superintendent Wayne Green and Anne Everett, Senior Director of Acceleration and Innovation programs, with a cohort of 100 9th graders who met that criteria. This year the program is expanding to 100 students in 6th, 7th and 8th grade cohorts­—under the leadership of Stacey Threatt—and staff resources will continue to grow with the program as it eventually becomes a well-defined post high school pathway for 6th through 12th grade students. 

Students and caregivers sign “policies and promises” as a declaration of their commitment to stay attentive to and engaged in in-school, after-school and occasional evening meetings that focus on topics like financial assistance for college, appropriate course loads based on post high school goals and application processes for colleges and universities. 

Green is well-versed in the barriers prospective first-generation college students face, as he has mentored dozens of them toward higher education and career success for more than 20 years.

“As educators we want to educate our kids so they can have choices. If they choose to go to college, we should prepare them to be successful at it, but we all want them to go and not have debt,” he says. “[We want] to prepare them so that they would be competitive for scholarships and additional financial aid. That begins with rigorous coursework and preparing them to be successful in advancement placement courses.”

Threatt, who worked as high school counselor in Orange County for more than two decades prior to making the move to PCPS, said she and Marsh understand the program’s success starts with positive relationships and consistent, attentive communication with all involved.

“I’m excited to start the middle school program because it is laying the groundwork, the foundation that will help students be successful in high school that will help them be successful in college,” she says. 

That foundation will include pointing students toward academic competitions, leadership opportunities, mentorships, internships and more.

While the framework for the program is thoughtfully and expertly designed, Marsh is quick to acknowledge that the long-term success of it will require flexibility and continual improvements based on real-time experiences. She mentioned that during the first year of Polk RISE! the attendance at some of the required meetings was less than expected, but she quickly understood that it wasn’t due to a lack of effort or desire to be involved. 

“A lot of our students are coming from families with very limited needs. Their parents are working in factories, or they're working the kinds of jobs that they cannot take off work,” she says. “In many of my students' families only one adult drives and the dad has the car and the mom is home with the kids.”

Adjustments to the program from those early lessons include options for some online meetings, as well as more informative material to read prior to meetings, so gatherings can be more productive because people come to them with the same baseline information.

Marsh is empathetic toward students who don’t particularly like school, because at one time that was her. As the youngest child of seven in her family she says her grades “were terrible” for a long time, and it wasn’t until a drama teacher “turned on the switch for me” that she found her footing. 

She dove headlong into theater, participating in as many as four or five shows at Theatre Winter Haven each year. That didn’t immediately translate into better grades, but it gave her the ability to identify some of her gifts and to see she was capable of doing challenging things.

“We’ve got to help flip the switch not only for sports, theater and co-curricular things—which are important—but to help kids understand that if they don’t get something, you’re in the right zone to learn it,” she says. “It feels good when you are competent and capable, when you do something well academically, when someone calls out a skill or a gift in you and when you persevere and you accomplish something that was difficult.”

The success of the Polk RISE! Program will be defined by intangibles as well as measurables.

The quantitative impact will be seen years from now in terms of how many students went to college, earned degrees, effectively managed their post-high school debt, etc.

For right now, it’s about setting the tone and building lasting relationships founded on trust

 “At the beginning of the [last school] year kids were very hesitant to talk, very hesitant to share, and now they’re reaching out like crazy asking me questions and parents are contacting me asking questions—so I know that we’re making a difference,” Marsh says.