The Retired Teachers’ Association of Manitoba (RTAM) started the Student Success Portfolio Project to engage communication and mentoring between RTAM members and their young relatives.
A Student Success Portfolio is a storage container used to collect a high school student’s unique artifacts representing their activities, events, skills, special awards and other items they wish to save.
Creating a portfolio over the four years of high school allows students to visually depict and save examples of all of the special experiences from this time in their life. During their Grade 12 year, this collection will be invaluable as they complete applications for post-secondary education; scholarships, awards and bursaries; and jobs before and upon graduation.
Mentoring
Retired teachers can play a major role in their young relatives’ lives by sharing their skills and strengths to guide the students toward success.
The Student Success Portfolio Program is designed for RTAM members to support their family members in creating these portfolios. It provides the student with the actual portfolio and ideas on what to collect, and the member with suggested mentoring strategies.
Members are encouraged to communicate with their relatives regularly to prompt the collection of appropriate documentation for their portfolios and their RTAM Student Award application, along with other scholarships and bursaries.
Who Can Participate
The program is open to RTAM members and their young relatives (grandchildren, nieces or nephews) in Grades 9, 10, 11 or 12. Students can reside anywhere in Canada or the United States.
For RTAM members who do not have any family members in high school, a family friend or acquaintance may enjoy their support in creating a portfolio.
Submit the application form to participate.
Funding
We are grateful for the support from a New Horizons for Seniors grant, which we have used to purchase the portfolios and cover miscellaneous expenses like logo design, translation services and mailing costs.
We have also allocated part of our funding to a potential research project with University of Manitoba master’s students to measure the program’s effectiveness and results.
Portfolio Documents
We’ve compiled portfolio inserts for students in both English and French:
Monthly Discussion Starters
Our monthly discussion starters include suggested questions to spark discussion about your student relative’s portfolio. You may also hold other spontaneous conversations that arise because of your unique relationship with the student.
Apply to the Student Success Portfolio Program
The program can be started at any time during the school year upon submission of the application form.