We like the way that Amy Lawrence, the Denton school district’s counseling director, described Naviance — a program that the counseling department plans to initiate to help students and parents prepare for life after high school.
“It is a road map to success,” Lawrence told school board members recently.
That has a nice ring to it.
Lawrence said the district will begin using the one-stop shop college and career readiness online platform during the 2012-13 school year at the district’s four high schools to allow students to set goals and track their progress.
The program will allow students and parents to research college admissions requirements, salary patterns and career growth potential, officials said. Students can even directly apply to colleges.
Other features of the program will allow students to create resumes and college essays and request school transcripts and letters of recommendation from counselors. They can also take career assessments and inventory strengths and weaknesses so they can determine what college or career best fits them.
Naviance allows families to access a vast array of information in a single place, Lawrence said.
“We want to streamline the process for our parents [and students] and Naviance allows us to do that in a more-organized format,” Lawrence told board members.
District officials plan to phase in the program over three years, and a long-term goal is to eventually implement the program at the middle-school level.
School board President Mia Price said the program will give parents the flexibility to be involved on their own schedule rather than taking time off work to meet with school counselors. It should also free up counselors to work with students in other areas.
“I think it will give the parents and students the opportunity to be more interactive in planning [students’] curriculum choices and their future after Denton ISD,” Price said.
Naviance offers plenty of potential, but for the program to succeed, parents and students must buy into it, Lawrence said.
To help with that process, officials said, personnel will receive training and students and parents will be introduced to the program throughout the coming school year.
Lawrence said the program will allow students to make an informed decision about their future, post-high school.
“This is something that will help them figure out what it is they want to do and what it is they don’t want to do,” she said.
That sounds like a pretty valuable resource to us.
