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A Mentor's Experience at New Tech HighQuitting is not an option. That was the slogan on the t-shirts worn by hundreds of Marion County high school students and scores of adults spread across several sections of Conseco Fieldhouse at the final Pacers home game earlier this year. It is also a tagline for Common Goal, a broad-based community initiative led by the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce to help improve high school graduation rates in Marion County. The Pacers Foundation is a primary sponsor of one of Common Goal’s core strategies – mentoring programs for students, beginning in their freshman year. I signed up for Common Goal last August, after reading about it all summer in the newsletters of just about every organization in town, from the state and local Chambers to Techpoint Foundation to Junior Achievement. I was aware of the shockingly high drop-out rates, particularly in some Indianapolis Public Schools buildings where less than 40-percent of freshmen graduate in four years; and it looked like this was a program that all “the players” had coalesced behind. …So, even though working with teenagers isn’t my favorite way to spend my time, I volunteered. And I’m glad I did. …I live and own property within the IPS District, and I have a vested interest in that school district being viable, so when I was given a choice of schools to work at, I chose the New Tech High magnet program at Arsenal Tech, right in the heart of Urban Times country. <more> |
Bob Compton Visits New Tech High @ Arsenal Tech!
Bob Compton is a Harvard Business School graduate with an honorary Doctorate from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He has spent most of his career as a professional venture capital investor specializing in start-up technology companies, primarily medical tech and software. Compton's latest endeavors include global traveler, author, record producer, photographer and filmmaker. Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination is his first documentary film and was released in 2007. The film follows two high school seniors in India, China and the U.S. (US students were from Carmel, IN) to compare and contrast the high school experiences in each country. How kids spend their time during high school - approximately four years, or two million minutes - in each culture is radically different and has profound implications for America's economy in the decades ahead. Compton has since produced several follow-up films, taking a deeper look into global education as well as films on entrepreneurship - both in the U.S. and in China. Click here to read Bob's reaction to his in-depth school visit.
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