By Beza Kifle
In the past couple of morning meetings, US Counselor Ms.Mehta introduced a new elective to the Upper School: Pathways to Success. It will be pass/fail and meet for half the rotation. I talked to Ms. Mehta in her office to learn more about what students in grades 10-12 will be doing in her class next semester.
While she has many areas that she wants to focus on in the class, “the main overarching goal is to really think deeply about what success means to you,” she explained.
In order to accomplish this, students will use self-exploration methods to better understand who they are through personality tests, aptitude tests, and other forms of self-reflection, “so that students can get to know themselves and then build skills throughout that,” she said.
She noted that college and careers are what people tend to look at as “hallmarks of success.” During the class, students will look at what careers would fit their personalities or strengths best. Ms. Mehta also wants to “broaden the different types of careers that people are aware of” since many students only have a small list of careers in mind. “We’ll explore more fields also. We know about doctors and nurses, but there’s a million people who work at a hospital, so look at those things to help open awareness of what is possible and what might be a good fit,” she explained.
With college being such a popular topic among students, Ms. Mehta also wants to have “mythbusting” to look at majors and how they fit into different career paths. “My goal would be that in exploring them, students would be better able to say, ‘This is how I personally am gonna measure success and college is a great stepping stone toward my dream industry,” she said.
One of her side goals is to help students understand that there are multiple factors that go into choosing a college, besides the name of it. “If you haven’t thought about what your actual experience on that college campus will be like, you know, on the day-to-day, do you want to see the same faces as you walk to class? Do you wanna see snow on the ground? These types of basic questions that I sometimes feel like get forgotten,” she explained.
During the semester, there will be a lot of collaboration between different faculty at Lovett. “I’m the primary teacher, but as we start diving into the actual lessons where we’re exploring, definitely college, I’ll have college counselors come join us or a class or two to help with some of that mythbusting,” Ms. Mehta told me.
To learn more about careers, students may have a class career fair, where people come to class or do a Zoom call to learn about different careers that are available.
This idea for a class has been something that Ms. Mehta has been thinking about for years, as the skills students learn can help them with future goals and their present daily lives. “This would be a really great thing to teach students about in a low-stakes way,” she added.
It was inspired by a class that she took herself during her freshman year of high school called Interpersonal Communication, where students learned about working with other people and also self-awareness. “I’ve often thought back to some of the team building stuff that we’ve done, and I’m like ‘This is actually really valuable,’” she explained.
Ms. Mehta wanted to have this class for 10th grade “because it’s before they start meeting with college counselors, but after [they’ve] got a year of adjustment,” she said. Adding upperclassmen allows there to be more students in the class, since this is only for the second semester this year due to her being out at the beginning of this semester. She added that if upperclassmen want to do this class, they should do it now since they may not be able to next year. It’s also currently available for students that have a free period next semester, or have a space in their schedule to add this elective.
Long term, this class may be something that is open to ninth graders and will be available for both semesters.
With the work that she and other faculty, parents, and students are doing with the Challenge Success survey results, she wants to help students expand their personal views of success and look at what is important to them.
After learning more about the class, I noticed its similarity to Ethical Leadership, an elective religion class I’m currently taking. “There will be some similarities,” Ms. Mehta said. Referring to Ethical Leadership, she noted how “you can’t be a leader unless you know yourself, and my class will be more of how you can’t necessarily have a life that’s fulfilling to you if you don’t know yourself and know what that’s going to mean.”
(To sign up, use this link, and she also posted a video too!)
