Welcome to New York State PROMISE, emerging voices. Today's topic is coming out of your shell. Fifteen-year-old PROMISE student Ronnell is used to hitting the books at Albany High School and excels in the classroom. He's also interested in a variety of possible careers including in business, as a sports agent and even a chef. We hear from the New York State PROMISE team about how they are assisting Ronnell to make sure he's on a path to success.
Well, some of my interests really is like I used to be a big fan of basketball. And I always wanted to be a basketball player, but I grew out of that stage. And I'm actually interested in like cooking or like my mom, lately I've been cooking with her a lot like, you know, learning some new recipes.
One of the possibilities that I want to look into are some job shadowing so that he can go with different professionals, spend the day or a week with them and see what their job actually entails, see what he might want to do. I do know the person that cooks at the Capital City Rescue Mission. And if he wants to volunteer there, maybe do some cooking, that might be an option for him too. In the meantime, he's done a very good job with volunteer experience with the Police Athletic League in Albany.
It's like a leadership program so like we work with like kids. We like donate stuff, work at food shelters, you know, stuff like that.
I think he's been doing that volunteer. He does expect that he would be hired when he's 16, which is this summer. And he wants to work for them, you know, just part-time. Right now he doesn't want to work many hours or even participate and volunteer too many hours because he's very fixated on his academics. He is an honor roll student, and he wants to keep it that way. Ronnell and his family actually have known for years. I had him and his siblings. I was a camp counselor as I was going to school to be a teacher and so I've known the family. And Ronnell has always been like this sweet, gentle, kind, you know, kid who's always cared about school and his grades.
With him, we've worked a lot on soft skills.
Basically, you learn how to like talk like one-on-one. Like say if I was in a real interview, then I will actually like be focused and, you know, not like stuttering and all that.
With PROMISE, you can see the difference in when he first started. And a lot of it is probably maturity as well, but he's able to -- if he needs something, he can come to me or you can go to Valerie or say I need help with this. He wouldn't speak up before and now he'll like work in groups and like put input in and things like that. I think with him which is helpful is PROMISE'S -- he's engaged and not just with me and not just with the service provider but also his mom. So mom has had benefits. She's been working on her credit score, removing things from her credit report. He also -- I just did a referral for him for financial literacy so he can learn how to like -- you have a checking account. You save this much money. And so he can be more aware of his financial literacy because he is going to be working soon. So he's going to start doing that, but the whole family is engaged.
The New York State PROMISE project produced this video under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education.