I am the coordinator of a leadership and mentoring program for minority students at the University of Central Florida. A part of the program involves a community service project, which my scholars---students enrolled in the program--- are in competing groups where they develop a project to be carried out in the spring if their idea wins. In 2011, the winning project was an idea to host a college-readiness, panel discussion at urban high schools. The execution was phenomenal—college students making themselves available to high school students during one of their classroom periods through a question and answer session, speaking presentations, and entertainment. Therefore, this project has become an annual event for my program. This year we have been scheduled to attend a high school that has heard much praise about the event and anticipates our coming. However, during the process of planning this event we incurred a roadblock because the contact we scheduled the event with failed to inform us that they would no longer be working there and did not transfer us the new person in their position. Neither had they informed the new person about the event. This left us in a bind because once we were able to connect with the new contact; he informed us that our scheduled date was no longer available due to this date being the day the school counselors going to their feeder school which they recruit middle school students getting ready for high school. After about two weeks of playing phone tag with the new contact I had to post pone our event because he was required to attend the feeder school. Thankfully we have been able to reschedule our program

            This incident made me wonder how often urban schools must forfeit one opportunity for another due to short staffing, poor scheduling and any other factor that arises against enhancing the students’ experiences.  Being an optimist, I take from this moment an understanding that persistence and patience in reaching students is greater than having my plans implemented exactly as initially planned. My new mentality in education is remain flexible and do not take anything personal because it is not about me, but about reaching the students to develop their excellence.