the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, at Monday’s Ridgewood Board of Education meeting Jeff Nyhuis, Assistant Principal of Guidance, Curriculum, and Instruction at Ridgewood High School, presented the Senior Focus program. This is the second year that the high school is running Senior Focus. The goal of this program is to provide consistent information about the college application process to all students and eliminate the need for a private counselor. The high school has a strong guidance department, and our counselors have visited over 400 colleges. Another goal of this program was to increase instructional time. Senior Focus has been built into the schedule so that students are pulled out of their free periods. Finally, Senior Focus is a way to reduce the stress that students experience.
Seniors are given a timeline to prepare them for the college admissions process. Google Classroom and Screen Casts are used to reach all virtual and hybrid students this year. Mr. Nyhuis showed what the Senior Focus Google Classroom looks like, highlighting the many local scholarship opportunities for our seniors. He then announced a new scholarship, The Dr. Daniel A. Fishbein Scholarship. Mr. Nyhuis read a letter about the scholarship which honors Dr. Fishbein’s years of service, leadership, enduring empathy, and commitment to all Ridgewood students. A complete list of donors to the fund will be sent to Dr. Fishbein in mid-December.
The scholarship appears in the scholarship books sent to all Ridgewood seniors as follows:
“Dr. Fishbein served with distinction as Superintendent of the Ridgewood Public Schools from 2008-2020. Dr. Fishbein, a career educator and resident of Ridgewood, consistently demonstrated leadership, character, and empathy for the community, the students, the administrators, teachers, and staff members. Dr. Fishbein led the schools through challenging times shaped by changes in society that reached into the schools. The Dr. Daniel A. Fishbein Scholarship is awarded to the student who, in the face of challenge, has demonstrated the natural leadership ability, strength, character, and empathy towards others.”
Mr. Nyhuis concluded by summarizing future plans. The goal is to expand these advisory groups by adding a Sophomore Focus and Junior Focus. Sophomore Focus will incorporate the MI Advantage Survey, Learning Style Survey, and Career Interest Survey. Information gathered from these surveys and follow-up discussions will serve as a tremendous resource for counselors in their work with the students. With the juniors, the goal is to add a college kickoff, summer work to prepare for the college application process, and the Do What You Are Survey. A speaker will be presenting to juniors this spring on how the college essay is used and how to write the essay. Mr. Nyhuis thanked The Foundation for supporting this effort.
Click here to view the PDF of the presentation.
Click here to view the webcast and scroll to 1:48:20.
What planet are you people on?
With all the shit going down this is what your thinking?
Yes junior let’s play out the college scam and end up with ZERO marketable skills and a sheepskin that’s mean ZERO.
The best employees I’ve ever had were the ones without the degrees. For gods sake I fired the guy for Cornell.
Don’t listen to your parents.
Don’t follow the rest of the lemmings.
Think for yourself.
Do what you love, the money will follow.