GEAR Up
A Game Plan for Making It to College
   

By Jonathan Gramling

On April 28, the Lowell Center was filled with the perfect ingredients
for helping students remain in school, excel in school and
matriculate to higher education. There were the parents of the
students. There were educators and community members. And most
importantly, there were the students themselves.
The occasion was the 11th Annual Recognition Banquet for the
Madison GEAR UP/EIP Program. The Madison program works with
students from East High School and its feeder middle schools Black
Hawk, Sherman and O’Keeffe to keep them in school, help them get
to college and give them some financial assistance once they get
there.
If the current graduating senior class is any indication, GEAR UP is
getting the job done. Of the 39 graduating seniors, 35 have specific
plans for attending a post-secondary educational institution. That’s an
excellent track record for a program that targets — according to the
statistics — students “at-risk” of not making it to college. Many of
them are the first in their families to attend college and are blazing
the trail for younger brothers and sisters. And each of them has had a
winning formula for success.
Latrice Harris-Collins, the keynote speaker for the banquet, knows a
lot about what it takes to make it into college. She is an admissions
counselor at Marquette University. Collins sees thousands of
students every year and sees even more admission applications.
She is a no-nonsense, but caring professional who tells it like it is.
And she had some tough love messages for everyone gathered at
the event.
Collins admonished the parents to take control of the situation at
home when it comes to education. She challenged the parents to
require academic performance and not request it. And in her
household, education takes priority over everything else, including
basketball.
“To play ball in my house, you have to have your business handled,”
Collins said. “I don’t care if your daddy is the coach. Mu husband is a
coach. ‘Daddy has practice.’ ‘I don’t care about coach. Do you want
me to go tell him” You’re not going anywhere.’ I have shown up at a
gym and talked to my husband and talked to him like I had never met
him before in his life. And the people go ‘Isn’t that your wife?’ He
says ‘Yeah man, let’s not talk about it.’ Why? Because I need my kids
to know I am serious and that sports and extracurriculars are a gift.
They aren’t an automatic. It’s called extracurricular for a reason. A
part of my job is quashing hoop dreams. I don’t care how good you
are bouncing that ball or throwing that ball or if you can run like the
wind. If you can’t count and you can’t read, how can I give you money to be at my
institution?”
Collins told the students that the world lay at their feet, but they had to take
responsibility for their own education and lives. No one was going to do it for them
and they were entitled to nothing. It is their job to go out there and compete.
“Take advantage of the education in front of you,” Collins admonished the students.
“Actually take it above and beyond because if you simply think the curriculum put in
front of you by a school will give you tool you need to survive in life, you are
foolish. Read a book that isn’t required piece of your curriculum. And for the student
who says they do not like to read, it’s not that you don’t like to read. Maybe you
have failed to run into something that is interesting yet. Find something interesting
to read and educate yourself. Stimulate your mind. Stimulate it in a good way.
Perform to a level beyond your wildest dreams. If you have any competitive spirit in
you, if you are a ball player, if you are into sports, whatever it might be, you have to
bring that same competitive edge to the classroom. Why settle for a C if you
could get an A with some additional help? Students, if you would be
uncomfortable with me looking you square in your eye and calling you
average, why allow your academic transcript to document it? I’ve never met
an average student. But I meet students who do below average work all the
time. And it’s not that they don’t have the potential. It’s because they aren’t
putting blood, sweat and tears into their work.”
      Collins also emphasized that a student’s character and interests were
also important in the admissions process. “I want to see that you actually do
something else than just be a student,” Collins said. “I love students who
are involved because if I know you are a busy high school student, that
means you could be a busy college student and you’re going to make life on
campus real interesting. I want to see that you actually care about people in
your community. I want to see that you have interests outside of the next pair
of gym shoes, the next pair of jeans or the next hairdo. I want to see that you
are thinking about your community and not just your community, but what is
happening with your state, what is happening outside of your state. I want to
know that you are thinking about what is going on globally. I want to know
that you are ready to change the world because we are in dire straits.”
      While nothing is guaranteed, if the students in the room that night took
Collins’ words of advice to heart and took advantage of all the support that
was in that room, all of them should be college bound.