| 2/18/2008 11:22:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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Ryan Rodgers / East Side Review
Mayor Coleman surveys The Doorway, a newly open college and career resource center at Dayton's Bluff Community Center. Also pictured are Second Shift volunteers, St. Paul students who planned the center, which has another location at Sun Ray Library. |
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Ryan Rodgers / East Side Review
Top, Members of Second Shift, Sahmad Nakumbe, 10th grade at Humboldt, Corey Vance, Central senior, Koua Her, Harding 11th grader, and Chee Chang, 12th grader at Central, try out the computers at The Doorway in the Dayton's Bluff Community Center. With another location in the Sun Ray Library, The Doorway is a college and career resource center, thought up and planned by the students.
Just above, With Mayor Coleman, Humboldt tenth grader Sahmad Nakumbe snips the ribbon at The Doorway grand opening Tuesday afternoon in the Dayton's Bluff Community Center. |
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Mayor shows us 'The Door'
Scott Nichols
news editor
It is a cruel irony: as college costs become more unaffordable every year, it is also becoming increasingly obvious that a high-school education no longer guarantees a livable wage.
Indeed, with college costs likely to top $10,000 a year for next year's freshmen at the University of Minnesota, the need for financial aid has likely never been greater. Any school guidance counselor will tell you this. As will the parents of the 58 percent of St. Paul Public Schools teens making a bee-line toward a two-year or four-year degree. As will St. Paul's mayor.
"We no longer live in a world where high-school education guarantees a young adult a living-wage job," said Chris Coleman last week, making clear the reason for the unveiling of his latest education-related Second-Shift Initiative called "The Doorway."
It turns out there are two such East Side doorways in the offing, at the same time metaphysical and concrete: one at the Dayton's Bluff Recreation Center, and one soon to open at Sun Ray Library, offering college and career assistance to information-hungry teens looking to land in college, a career or internship.
Guest speakers from area colleges will visit both locations throughout the year. At the Dayton's Bluff Recreation Center, teens can get help with GED preparation, internship and financial aid searches, and even some career exploration during once-a-month visits from Goodwill Easter Seals staff.
At Sun Ray Library, branch manager Sheila Winderlich says she hopes to have staff trained in on the Minnesota Career Information System by next month.
Available during business hours, the database purchased from the state of Minnesota and actually soon to be available in any library is in essence a catch-all career resource. It guides users through career choices, practice ACT and SAT tests, interest inventories, detailed job descriptions and job banks, financial aid hunting.
It even has a component to help users get their own business off the ground, according to Winderlich.
The first Second Shift Initiative pilot began last fall, when students at Ames, Eastern Heights, and Nokomis were allowed to stay and play at Hazel Park Recreation Center during spring break vacation when school wasn't in session. So successful was the program that the mayor quickly pushed it to expand to all 30 of the city's rec centers as well as the Mt. Airy Boys and Girls Club.
Near the end of last year, the city also began three free circulator bus routes for teens living in Dayton's Bluff and upper and lower Payne-Phalen, modeled after a similarly free and successful bus route on the West Side that connected children quickly to libraries and recreation centers.
Scott Nichols can be reached at snichols@lillienews.com or at 651-748-7816.
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