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13th Annual WISE Conference
"Enriching the Senior Year"

On March 26, 2004 WISE Services sponsored its 13th Annual Conference entitled "Enriching the Senior Year." This was an exciting conference for many reasons. For the first time, the annual conference took place outside the New York metropolitan area in Providence, Rhode Island. Our host, Textron Chamber Academy, is the first charter school to join the WISE family, and as an inner-city alternative school, it provided participants with a chance to learn about their program.

Two Textron Chamber graduates gave inspiring presentations to start and end the conference. Nacoula Burgos, Textron Chamber '03, described the sense of accomplishment she felt when she designed and produced from scratch six gorgeous dresses. Five of the dresses were modeled by her friends and classmates. The sixth was modeled by her mother, who told the audience that she had never been more proud of her daughter than she was when she completed her WISE project. What made the project all the more remarkable was that Nacoula did not know how to sew when she began her project! In the final presentation, Rynaldy Rosario, Textron Chamber '03, described how he had learned to fly and achieved his dream to be an airplane pilot. Conference-goers were able to experience some of the thrill of Rynaldy's first flight at the controls in a video presentation and heard him say, " If all the schools in this country had this program our youth could find their dream."

An introductory workshop was provided for schools new to the program and two core workshops were given on "Survival Strategies for WISE Practitioners" and "Building WISE into the High School Curriculum and the Schedule. "Survial Strategies," led by Franny Hertz, Rondout Valley Co-Coordinator and Andrew Lutz, Retired Co-Coordinator and WISE Services staffer, focused on building and maintaining a strong Task Force and supporting mentors. Real-life scenarios presented gave participants an opportunity to develop problem-solving strategies. The Curriculum Workshop, led by Linda Greene and Mary Mastro of WISE Services, and Howard Sheldon, Principal of Nathan Hale Ray High School, presented an array of curricular models for integrating WISE into the High School program.

Participants offered many comments at the conclusion of the conference. Among these were the following: "This was a good way to get together and discuss WISE with other coordinators." "It helped me put my program in the grand scheme of WISE." " I got a lot of ideas to take back with me." "With expert planning and maybe some luck, you dealt with issues that are currently most important to me - new ideas for incorporating WISE into the school, and solving mentoring problems." "I valued the students who spoke so passionately about what WISE has done for them." "I really learned a lot." "I learned that WISE is different in every single school."

Traveling to Rhode Island for our annual conference presented us with the opportunity to provide an overview of WISE to Rhode Island schools. We hope this will lead to an expansion of our program in New England. This conference also presented us with a chance to get to know some of the participants of the program at Textron Chamber and for our staff and visiting schools to see a wonderful WISE program in operation. We thank Textron Chamber for their hospitality.