EMERGE inspires our kids, opens doors to top colleges

Whenever I see our students reaching a little higher and pushing a little further to achieve their dreams, it inspires me to think about how we can best support them along the way. I want HISD to be continually opening doors for students, encouraging them to dream big, and equipping them with the tools they need to get where they’re going, both in their education and in life.

That’s one of the reasons I was so glad this week for the chance to visit and talk to students participating in the EMERGE Institute program at Rice University. I wrote not too long ago about the 80 HISD students who took a tour of seven Ivy League and Tier I colleges through the EMERGE program. Programs like this are teaching our kids that they can reach for the stars, even if those stars seem a long way off. Our kids are learning that attending a top school can be a real possibility for them, even if they can’t imagine where the money will come from, or if no one in their family has ever attended college before.

And EMERGE is doing more than just inspiring our kids to dream big, it’s also working to give them practical tools, and helping them to develop a map and a plan for how to get from “Point A” to “Point B.” The journey to college can be filled with unfamiliar territory, and even the most resourceful families often run into roadblocks and confusion along the way. At the EMERGE Institute at Rice this week, about 70 top-performing, low-income rising HISD seniors got a lesson in how to translate big dreams into big actions. They attended sessions on navigating the college application landscape, on writing personal statements, and on acing the interview process – and they did it while staying in the Rice University dorms and getting a feel for life on a college campus.

The hard work these kids are putting in and the incredible support they’re getting from the EMERGE Foundation are inspiring me this week, and they should inspire you, too. As is so often the case in education, our kids are teaching us a valuable lesson! It’s great to dream big, and we should all do it more often. But it’s also important to plan and take action and get to work on making our dreams a reality.