Today’s class became the latest installment of

a Sherlock Holmes like mystery – “The Case of The Homework Abductions”.

The Hope Life Skills Weekly Compliance Report: attendance, i.e. who’s here, who’s not, who’s late and not, as well as homework status

8 student homework assignments from the September 15th class were delivered to Mr Cronin’s email address.

“Only 8!“

a perplexed Mr Cronin exclaimed in class.  23 homework assignments were missing!   The knee jerk assumption was ‘hackers!!’.   Could this be the work of those same dastardly, cyber disrupters who infiltrated the Home Depot and Target web sites last year?  “Is nothing safe on the internet today?” a frustrated Mr Cronin sighed.

What to do?

Only one way to proceed –

ask the question

‘why’.  And, what better

 way than the time-tested index card exercise!

Index cards were distributed to all students in Friday’s class with the instruction “if you did not complete this week’s homework assignment, please indicate what Mr Cronin did which caused you not to complete this week’s homework?”  
The truth, as the index cards always reveal, was quickly determined and steps taken immediately to avoid a repeat of this chilling situation in the future.  No hackers nor nefarious cyber agents of disruption!  Not at all this time.  Mr Cronin just needs to ensure that all students understand that all homework assignments are posted here, on the Hope Life Skills web site, by the Sunday evening following each Friday morning class!  Students agreed; this case is unequivocally solved with universal acknowledgement of the homework protocol moving forward.  Now, on to the next mystery and the critical questions to ask.

 Friday’s class also reviewed the list of guests coming to class in October and November.  From a corporate Human Resource Manager introducing the skills and preparations for job interviews with a few role playing activities to reinforce the instruction and a ‘design’ evangelist from Singapore to several other inspiring story tellers, the Life Skills class has a full schedule moving forward.

The class reinforced last week’s reading assignment on

the importance of questions.

Mr Cronin’s resume was distributed and each student was asked to write down a question generated from their review of his resume or from observations to date from our first two Life Skills classes and BIF field trip.

The goal is to take our developing skill and comfort asking questions to coming classes with the many inspiring story tellers visiting us over the next several weeks.  And then, for the storytellers who really interest us, asking for their business cards and making them part of our growing network of successful, credible, trustworthy professionals.

Aimon Foreman (left) exchanges business cards with Nan Quinlan, former Training and Development Officer at TACO, Inc following the Life Skills class on resume writing last year.  Aimon must have learned valuable lessons from Nan’s classes on resume writing and interviewing skills because she was awarded a paid internship at the corporate offices of CVS Health following her junior year in the Hope Life Skills class.