What a great way to kick-off the IGNITE year!!
It was such a fantastic event and turnout. We had about 80 girls attend Glitter this year!
I want to thank all of the amazing people who made this day possible.
First, Lisa Sandoval, who is the person who put this all together!
Lisa orchestrates the event as a well-oiled machine: from the information packets, to the juice and breakfast bars outside as the girls get off of the buses, to the students with balloons leading each group inside to their workshops. Each piece of this event went off without a hitch thanks to Lisa’s amazing organizational mastery. We cannot thank her enough for making this such a fun, educational, inspirational experience for the girls.
The girls left happy, excited, and anticipating a new IGNITE year.
Also, thank you to all who helped make this day so special, including Virginia Wright, IGNITE board president and technology manager, who came to co-lead the IGNITE workshop with me. I could not keep up this work without her.
Another big thank you to Lisa’s students and staff: to Maria Sanders, who designed the beautiful posters for Glitter and worked hard on getting the posters sent to the schools, who also works hard on all of the preparation for this event; and to Ed Messerly, Teacher in IT program, Sara Smiley, IT program, Taylor Loran, IT program, Sekela Rabb, IT program, Shelby Severin, IT Program, and Todd Haak, Running Start Director, who each presented at the lunch time panel.
A big thank you to all of the High School teachers and staff:
Barbara Quintana, South Lake and Center School, DeAira Handugan from Sealth, Michele Green from South Lake, Michelle Sloan from West Seattle, Susan Evans from Cleveland, Larry Steele from Franklin, Bonnie Tidwell from City Campus, and Janet Higgins from Hale. And there were even more teachers behind the scenes, helping out with the recruiting and field trip forms. It takes a lot of work to get 80 girls to a conference from 9 schools!
The teachers did a great job in inspiring girls to attend and get excited about our new IGNITE schedule for this year. It was such a fabulous event.
We had three workshops: Ed did a workshop on IT education, Lisa’s students Anjali and Nyika did a workshop on preparing for college, financial aid forms, and what the students need to do to get in to college and comparison pricing of community colleges and what they have to offer at Central particularly in IT programming.
I did a workshop all about IGNITE – What is IGNITE? What can IGNITE do for you? We went over all of our activities and how to access the IGNITE program through the chapter leaders at their high schools.
Then we all had lunch and had a panel presentation from women students in IT at Central and opened to questions from the girls. They asked great questions. Lisa had fabulous prizes, made available through a grant she had written to do this event! A representative from Running Start spoke about that program, which is entering college while you are in high school and how to do it. Girls can take classes at community college and earn college credit while still in high school. They can either go full time or take high school classes and college classes at the same time. They can do whatever they are comfortable with. It’s a great program! Then the girls got a tour of the school from tour guides, Olivia, Sonny, Nyika, Meagan, Najmo and Samantha and that completed our day.
The event at Seattle Central was our IGNITE kick-off event for the school year, and it was a great way to start!
Now I will share some of the girls’ feedback about the day, selected from the comments on the evaluation forms.
- The conference was great, and everyone made things easy to understand.
- I appreciated learning about scholarships, and about IGNITE. Everyone was great.
- I loved the workshop about IGNITE. It focused on leadership for girls, and I loved the video about the program.
- I learned a lot in the workshop about security and technology.
- I really liked how pumped up people got me about this field.
- Everyone was inspiring. The conference was great.
- I really appreciated the information about Seattle Central Community College. How to enroll, and everything about it was very helpful. Everyone was so friendly and I learned a lot. I felt my questions were answered well.
- I really liked the workshop about technology of the future.
- I learned a lot about how to enroll in college, what is IGNITE all about, and all about computer related careers. It was an awesome day.
- I thought the whole day was informative and showed us young women about careers that we women rarely ever think about going into.
- It was informative and insightful.
- I enjoyed all of the workshops, especially learning about future technology.
- I really appreciated how well people answered my questions and how they cared to do a good job for us.
- The highlights for me were, learning about IGNITE, enrolling in college and all about computer related careers.
- I learned more about computer related technology fields and that is important for me because I am interested in designing and internet.
- It’s really nice to learn all of this stuff. I wished we had more time and I want to do more events like this one.
- The highlights for me were, interesting speakers, good information, and the IGNITE video. I loved learning about IGNITE. And I found the future of technology workshop to be inspiring also. It was well put together. All of the speakers did really well. Also the lunch panel was very insightful and entertaining. I thought this event was perfect and I would not change a thing.
- My favorite part was gaining more knowledge about IGNITE and student life at Seattle Central Community College. I really liked how everyone encouraged women to look for jobs in the business technology field. I did not realize women were so under represented.
- All of the speakers were very informative and passionate. I liked the guy who talked about internet security, he was very energetic.
- I loved all of it. Everything was great.
- My favorite part was all of the presenters. The workshop on web safety was great! All of the speakers were great! Everyone was so well prepared.
- I really enjoyed seeing the IGNITE video and understanding more about women in technology. All of the speakers were inspiring and they made my goals feel attainable. I have only positive things to say.
- I thought the lunch panel was great. They shed light on attending school at Central and how they enjoyed the IT program and how it helped them.
- It was amazing to see how everyone was so passionate in their presentations. I see that we have a lot 0f opportunities in IGNITE.
- Highlights for me included: They answered every question I had, the teachers put things in a really interesting way, and I got to learn a lot of new things. I loved the IGNITE workshop the best! And I enjoyed hearing about the women’s experience going to Seattle Central CC. I wanted the event to be longer.
- I loved learning about IGNITE and really look forward to doing more IGNITE events. Everyone was so nice and cool. It was perfect.
- I learned about technology and engineering careers. That was the high light for me. I enjoyed all of the presentations and learned a lot.
- I really liked seeing how women can be successful and what careers were open to women. All of it was fantastic. Very interesting and I learned a lot!
- Super, it was amazing. I liked what the students at Seattle Central had to say, from their standpoint.
- I liked hearing about how advanced technology will get.
- I liked learning about IGNITE and Running Start. And I really loved the college prep workshop. I liked how they told their stories about how they got where they were; it really inspired me!
- I really appreciated how everyone cared so much and took time to talk to us. Everyone was so wonderful to us. It was very clear to me that people really cared about us teenagers, and wanted us to get our education. I liked everyone who shared their experience with us.
- This conference really inspired me to think about what technology jobs are out there and thinking to myself that could be me someday. Knowing that there are more choices out there changed my perspective on my future.
- Highlight for me were, the women who took time to share with us how they got to where they are today. I really liked how they stayed true and told us it is hard to do their careers but that applies to any career. Everyone was very diverse and has an interesting personality.
- I enjoyed the student leadership workshop and the IGNITE workshop the most. It really answered my questions,, even the ones I did not ask. Also how the founder of IGNITE Personally held the workshop showed me how dedicated the IGNITE women are.
- A lot of the speakers had a lot of background information. They were able to reel me in and engage in what they were saying about technology today.
- I loved their answers, they all helped me with my thoughts about IT and how amazing it is. I now know that math will not stop me; I am motivated and inspired! Thanks ☺
There were a lot of similar comments; all were really inspired. It was an overwhelming success. Thank you to everyone making this day possible. And here is to the best IGNITE year to date!
Thank you all,
Cathi