Where have you been?

But before finalizing plans for the upcoming year, take time to look back and reflect on past successes and challenges, expectations, and outcomes. Take 20 or 30 minutes to respond to the questions that follow. Jot down your thoughts and impressions. Reflecting now may help you make better decisions in the future.

Return to your original grant and stated goals for the past year to consider:

• How well did we meet our goals?
• What was our biggest success? What factors led to that success?
• What was our biggest challenge? How did we respond? What will we take away from that experience?
• What activities do volunteers/members and students tackle in their time together?
• Do tutors' activities align with our goals? Are there better ways to structure time and activities to increase impact on student achievement?
• How do tutors evaluate the quality of their student-tutor relationships? Are there new ways to enhance and support these relationships?
• If yours is a service-learning program, do service activities link successfully with students' academic goals?
• How well did we communicate with our point people at schools and hosting organizations? Did our system provide adequate and timely information exchange?
• How often, and in what ways, did we communicate with tutors? Was this enough? Did we talk about important issues at the right time?
• How did we show program impacts? What information have we not been able to obtain or report? Why?
• How did we survey important stakeholders (educators, volunteers, school principals, students, parents) to gauge their satisfaction and seek suggestions for improvement? Have we missed important stakeholders?
• On what topics, how frequently, and in what formats did we offer training or inservice for tutors? Did tutors report that they were prepared with a variety of strategies? What issues arose during the year that we could address with training or other support this year?
• How effective was our collaboration? What did each partner do to support and enhance collaboration with one another? How can we improve?
• Did our advisory group and tutors play important roles? How can these expand?
• How did we stretch ourselves this year? What was valuable about that experience?
• Given past experiences, where should we focus our energy this year? How can we focus on those objectives?