Grads Return at Columbia HS -- 2016 Edition

On December 21 Columbia hosted its 7th annual Grads Return program. The program has recent Columbia HS grads come back and participate in panel discussions with current students. The program is highly popular among the graduates and many current students actually learn a lot from the grads.

When it started in 2010 we had three science/engineering panels, what we now call STEM panels. It has expanded to 30 panels on diverse topics -- STEM, Performing Arts, Art, Studying Abroad, Community Colleges, Military, Women's Colleges, Safety on College Campuses, Journalism, Social Studies, Business, Design, International Affairs and other topics. Panels last 2 periods.

Each speaker receives a gift card to Words Bookstore in Maplewood and funding for the gift cards comes from the CHS Cougar Boosters and the CHS HSA. This year we had close to 100 speakers (actually more as a lot of grads just show up!) Many speak on multiple panels.

This year, due to an emergency evacuation which cancelled all of Period 4 at Columbia, we had "only" 3400 students cycle through the panels as teachers brought classes to the various venues in the school. If there was no emergency evacuation we would have easily matched last year's attendance of 4200 students as 8 panels during period 4 had to be cancelled!

In 2014 we had over 2100 students cycle through and in 2013 over 1000 students. Each year the program becomes more of a tradition -- one where the recent grads come back to share their knowledge and experiences with today;s current students. The speakers often go visit their teachers when they are not speaking on panels. As I walk around in town I meet grads who want to speak. I have often recruited speakers out of the Able Baker, Kings, 165, the Trat and other venues.

Ms. Aaron believes this is the largest such program in NJ if not anywhere. It ties the school and several organizations, the current students and many recent grads into a program that we hope really does become a tradition.

Of course the program always can get better and next year we hope to run the program with, perhaps, a larger cast of speakers. On a practical basis, we do run out of usable space for panel discussions: we use the cafeterias (both sides), the Main Gym (opposite corners), the Library (front and back), the Auditorium and the Black Box Theater. With a 9 period day and panels running for 2 periods (and the cafeterias off-limits for three of the periods of the day for lunches) we have effectively used up all the space. The east and west gyms lack suitable seating and the speakers and the students are separated as the seating in those gyms is elevated -- like in a balcony format.

One small item that always amuses me -- the Grads sit on the panels and they understand what it is like when kids are on their cell phones texting or going on social media. I have many times herd the Grads tell a current student to put the phone away!! Yes, they all grow up at some point!!!

This is a wonderful program, and I appreciate all the effort and goodwill put in by organizers and speakers. That said, I'm confused about why students can't decide for themselves who they would like to go listen to. My daughter's class had to vote for one topic, and the entire class has to go listen to a grad who focuses on that topic. In this case, the topic selected was Biomedical science, something she has zero interest in. Juniors and Seniors should be given some freedom to make their own choices, as this event has the potential to really help HS students make informed choices.

Sometimes it is hard to have 2000 kids to go to 8 different locations in the building. Without trying to underestimate our students, some kids in, say B-wing 3rd floor, may decide to go to the Black Box Theater in basement level of D-wing, and get distracted along the way, by the hundreds of other kids moving in all directions with no supervision.

We have wrestled with this and our system of tracking where students are when they do not move as a group under supervision of a teacher simply is not, let's say, up to the task. At any given time we may have somewhere in the vicinity of 70 classes in the building going on, and if 35 of them split into 8 streams each (max number of simultaneous sessions possible in our program) that gets to 280 sets of notices that have to be sent to the 8 panel moderators. Trust me -- we have looked at this from many angles and our attendance and tracking systems need to be overhauled.

Years ago students wore their ID cards on lanyards and parents eventually pushed to get rid of that. It is a safe bet that many students do not have their ID cards with them on any given day. A system that could, for example, allow students to swipe in to a room using their ID cards would at least register where they are at any given time. What we have now simply cannot track that many students who wish to go different ways.

Hence, most classes go to one location or can split at locations where two panels are underway -- eg front part of library and back part of library, or old cafeteria and new cafeteria, or the two opposite corners of the main gym.

We are always open to suggestions how to manage this aspect of the program. We have 30 panels; each is 2 periods long; that makes 60 sessions. Add to that the occasional emergency evacuation. But one idea that may be useful to at least consider is to reach out to the HSA and see if they have some volunteers who can help bring groups to various locations, like the previously cited possibility of 3rd floor B-wing kids wanting to go to Black Box theater in the D-wing basement level.

The list of the 30 panels (listed alphabetically) and when and where they were located is shown below. Some panels got renamed the day before as the speakers thought the individuals on the panel helped tilt the panel discussion to a slightly different topic. The Grads do take some ownership of the topics and want to pass on to the current students their experiences.

Next year we will go through the process of allowing more kids to go to various panels, but I can predict it won't be an easy affair to manage.