College Signing Day is coming up!!!

College Signing Day 2018  As many of you may know, May 1st is the date by which many high school seniors have to let colleges know where they plan to attend in the fall. For the fifth year, Reach Higher is encouraging schools and communities to host College Signing Day to recognize students’ hard work. College Signing Day will be widely celebrated this year during the first week of May! Check out our website, and download our College Signing Day toolkit for helpful information on how to host your College Signing Day event. We’ve also provided a webinar to assist you in planning your celebration.   Through the support of the College Football Playoff Foundation, we will be giving away $100,000 in microgrants to public school teachers. Teachers must (1) register their College Signing Day event on www.bettermakeroom.org/college-signing-day/; (2) create a College Signing Day project on DonorsChoose.org; and (3) email the link to their College Signing Day project on DonorsChoose.org to reachhigher@civicnation.org to be eligible for a microgrant to support their event. Last year, we had more than 1,500 registered events nationwide. This year, we hope that even more partners will join the movement to shine a spotlight on those students who make a commitment to pursue a postsecondary education. Register at bettermakeroom.org to let us know about your event and to receive information that will help make this your best College Signing Day yet. Make sure to follow @ReachHigher and @BetterMakeRoom for more updates, and don’t forget to use #CollegeSigningDay, #ReachHigher, and #BetterMakeRoom in your social media posts! We can’t wait to celebrate your students this spring.

We're hosting a Twitter chat with the American College Application Campaign on March 20th at 3:00 pm EST /12:00 pm PST. We'll be discussing College Signing Day preparation. We'd love for you to join the conversation! Hosts: Better Make Room (@BetterMakeRoom), Reach Higher (@ReachHigher), and American College Application Campaign (@American_CAC) Hashtag: #SigningDayChat Topic: Tips for Hosting a College Signing Day Event Many schools and communities will host a College Signing Day (or Decision Day) event on or around May 1 to celebrate seniors selecting which college they will attend. The goal of the #SigningDayChat is to share best practices for planning and organizing an event. Learn from fellow college access professionals and national partners who have successfully organized events to celebrate their seniors. Target audience/purpose: School counselors, college access professionals, college advisers, and program directors at youth-serving organizations. To help practitioners prepare as they celebrate students taking this critical step. Want the #SigningDayChat questions in advance? Send us an email at bettermakeroom@civicnation.org. Introducing swampED For eight years, President Obama made the White House a place that brought people together -- incredible students, parents, principals, district leaders, school counselors, teachers, college presidents, professors, business leaders, and more. And after January 2017, the inspiring stories we heard and the incredible people we met no longer had a place to share their experiences and ideas with folks across the country. Now they do, thanks to the new education podcast swampED, hosted by three former Obama White House staffers, Eric Waldo, Stephanie Sprow Owens, and Kyle Lierman. These stories constantly remind and inspire us of people’s commitment to education. It is the ultimate bedrock of our society, one that people are passionately fighting to make better. At the White House, we were fortunate to get to shine a spotlight on some of those incredible education advocates. We want to continue to shine that spotlight and talk about what’s working and how others can get involved, and hopefully be inspired along the way. We hope you’ll join us. Guests include former Secretary of Education, John B. King, Jr; the 2018 School Counselor of the Year, Kirsten Perry; chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon; and the CEO of College Advising Corps, Nicole Hurd. swampED is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. Subscribe, download, and rate it today. Follow @swampEDpod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Note: This podcast is not formally affiliated with Reach Higher, Better Make Room, or Civic Nation.