As an Admission Counselor, interacting with new students daily is part of the recruitment process. Every group or individual you connect with comes from different backgrounds. The most difficult part of recruitment is finding creative ways to connect with all the students I encounter. Making Thinking Visible (MTV) is a helping tool that allows me to create an environment that focuses on:
- Connections
- Individualized Thinking First
- Comfortability
MTV offers strategies that can be used in many settings. It is presented from an educator’s perspective, but any profession can use these strategies with the necessary adjustments.
SAIL: Speak-Ask-Ideas-Learned
This week, I decided to put an MTV strategy to use during my recruitment of high school visits. This particular strategy is referred to as SAIL, which stands for Speak-Ask-Ideas-Learned. The goal of SAIL is to engage students and allow them to participate in their learning actively. This strategy offers up a two-way street for communication, especially in the role of Admissions.
SAIL in Practice
- Speak: Before my speech about Miami University, I let the students know who I am (name, title, and educational background). Once I finish, I have the students go around and introduce themselves by telling me their name, year in school, and what they are interested in studying when they get to college. Now that introductions are out of the way, I walk them through housekeeping items. This is my time to let them know that I want to be informal in communication because I do not like to listen to people talk at me, so I do not want to talk at them. I let them know my time with them will be interactive, so be prepared to answer random questions throughout the presentation.
- Ask: After discussing the housekeeping items, I ask the students two questions. (1) Who has been to Miami University? This is an opportunity for those who have not seen our campus to hear from their peers about the campus. (2) What do you want your college experience to look like? This question catches the students off guard frequently because this is not something that they have thought about during their college process. These two questions are vital because they allow me to validate and listen to their responses.
- Ideas: Now that I have taken the chance to know the students, their interests, and how they want to spend their next four years, I can use this information as examples and selling points in my speech. This can remind the students that I am listening to them and showing them what they want is easily achievable. Most importantly, I am giving them tools to utilize at whatever college they attend.
- Learned: Once I finish the presentation, I leave the students with the advice I wish someone had told me about before going to college. I ask again if anyone has any questions. If there are any questions, I take the time to answer them thoroughly. I remind them to email me if they need anything or have other questions. Lastly, I thank them for attending the session and engaging with my presentation.
SAIL Evaluation
Overall, I believe the students responded well to the MTV strategy, SAIL. They were enthusiastic and engaged. Throughout the presentation, students stopped and asked clarifying questions about what I said. I could see the excitement on their faces. Their facial expressions showed me they were listening and engaged in the discussion. This meeting was virtual, and students could use the chatbox to ask questions. This benefited the students who were too shy to speak up and utilize their mic. I want to use a post-it note version of the chatbox for my in-person visits. I could tell when students wanted to say something or ask questions but were uncomfortable. Next time, I will utilize Post-it notes for anonymous questions during in-person high school visits.
TCE Thresholds
- Teaching and learning honors people’s full humanity. SAIL allows the students and teachers to acknowledge their interests and questions. It eliminates silencing individuals. It emphasizes using experiences and examples of others to help create something bigger than what was presented.
- Teaching is/as intellectual engagement. Through the use of SAIL, we are working to promote active engagement. SAIL pushes students to get involved in their learning and continue questioning what they are learning.
I really enjoyed getting to see this from a different perspective and the SAIL activity sounds like it was a huge success. I love how you highlighted that this strategy eliminates silencing individuals – it is a challenge to ensure every student has a voice and is comfortable using it!
You did a great job connecting MTV to your role in the admission process. I love that the SAIL strategy translated to your position and was effective in achieving the goals of learning more about the students as well as them learning about the college life. I agree that an anonymous feature would be beneficial especially for shy students. I found this link to create anonymous polls in Zoom https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/213756303-Conducting-polls-in-meetings#h_01ETTJHB1NSXG2A5E1PQ5X3ZB9 Have you used this feature before? If not, I hope it proves to be helpful!
Hi there,
I have had professors do Zoom polls to get us activated and participating without actually talking. My Zoom visits are iffy because 2/3 of virtual visits have had 0 people show up. This is the first virtual visit where I had students attend. If I do another virtual visit this year, I will try to do the polls to see how engagement is. Thank you for the advice!
Hi Jt!
Great post! I am always so intrigued as to how you make connections to this course through a different role than a classroom teacher! I love that you were able to implement the SAIL strategy into your presentation, this is a perfect strategy to use. A suggestion that I thought of while reading your evaluatioin post for anonymous questions for virtual presentations or even in person presentations would be to make your presentation in Peardeck where students can join the live presentation and interact with questions/polls. Have you used Peardeck before? It is a website my admin uses for meetings fairly often and it is very user friendly on both ends! Here is a link to a Peardeck blog post about increasing engagement https://www.peardeck.com/blog-categories/engaging-every-student I hope this is helpful!
Hi Ciara,
I am glad that you enjoy reading my post from a different perspective. I have never heard of Peardeck before. It sounds like a good tool to spice them up during my in-person visits. I only worry about technology because some schools block different websites, or I do presentations inside a study room. I wish there were consistency in my school visits, but they differ a lot. Thank you for providing me with this blog.