Guest Speaker: Marissa from Family Promise

The latest guest speaker was Marissa from Family Promise. Family Promise is a shelter that helps people who are homeless, soon to be homeless, or those with very low income that cannot financially support themselves. They take in everyone except for single males. Marissa explained the three different types of housing assistance: shelter, transitional, and rapid rehousing. She also explained how her job ties in with the shelter. Her job within the shelter was to manage the transitional unit and the company finances; and her title is the case manager.

   One of the ways Family Promise is helpful for people is that they take in people with mental illness as long as they're actively working to get better and help make sure that the people can take their medications and attend any health appointments. Another way they help people is that the children can still attend school while under the shelter's assistance, and adults can still get jobs. A third way Family Promise helps people is the three different types of housing assistance I mentioned earlier (shelter, transitional, and rapid rehousing). Marissa also mentioned that the people under the shelter's care can and do develop personal relationships with the workers.

   Whether it's through rehousing or financial support, organizations like Family Promise, and the people who work for them, like Marissa, are helping many people; not just helping them with their housing, but helping them with their futures.

★Caitlin Marsch

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, we did not take a photo of Marissa!

Peer Profile: Sami Ahrens

Name: Sami Ahrens

Age: 14

Grade: 8th

Favorite thing about Pathways: It's project based instead of test based

Favorite project so far: Life Project-Finance Career Cluster

Plans for the future at this point: Car Mechanic~Manufacturing
Fun facts about Sami: This is her second year at Pathways. Her twin brothers attend Pathways too!

Peer Profile: Emily T.

Name: Emily Treusch

Age: 15

Grade: 10th

Favorite Thing About Pathways: the individualized project-based learning.

Favorite (school-assigned) Project so far: the "we built a zoo" project.

Plans for the Future at this Point: Currently plans on 6 years of college to get a degree in psychology to be therapist.

What Projects have you Designed? Favorite? Least Favorite?: Favorite is the mental health presentation, she got to do something she likes and is interested in, least favorite is the argument paper on electroshock therapy because it's dealing with a lot of very negative things people would rather deny

Are you looking forward to any projects?: Health science career cluster projects

Additional comments: I really like the way the 10th graders run things. We look at standards from the state, and decide which ones we can use to make a project. It's a lot of looking at career clusters, then narrowing it down to a few standards and trying to hit them. Eventually you'll build up enough standards and make a project out of them. It doesn't work for everyone, but for some it works very well.

Project Review: Mid East Peace Plan

The last project that the 7th and 8th grade students completed was a Mid-Eastern Conflict Peace Plan. This primarily focused on Israel and Palestine (the center of it all). In social studies, the students had to research the history, what Israel wants, what Palestine wants, and previous ways they have tried to fix this in the past. After gathering all the research, the students got into assigned groups to put together a plan for peace. The presentation needed a creative name, all information gathered, at least six pictures, and everyone from the group's participation. It was ironic that most of the groups had disagreements even though it was a project about peace. In the end, we needed to present in nice clothes to simulate presenting to the government. After the presentations, we were able to question the group’s decisions and the group needed to answer them. English also tied into the concept, as we read a book called Real Time that focused on the perspectives during the conflict, and we did multiple meaningful discussions related to the book. With the project, we got to understand more about the world,  and the possibility to make the peace plan a reality for the future.

~Adam Fehring

★Caitlin Marsch-Editor