Ep: 228 - SchoolQuest - Judy Glennon, Military Child Education Coalition

If you are a military family with kids you don’t want to miss this show. In this episode I sit down with my friend Judy Glennon. Judy is the Parent Initiatives Program Manager at Military Child Education Coalition (www.militarychild.org). We discuss the release of their newest online resource ‘SchoolQuest’an interactive tool specially designed to support highly mobile military families and students with school transitions and the 6ththrough 12thgrade academic journey.

SchoolQuest Tools & Features include:

• StudentQuest Academic Tracker. Monitor and plan students' academic career progress from 6th to 12th grade.
• Student Profile. Customized student profiles automatically compile important details and deadlines for quick views and access.
• Online Community. Connect with other military parents to build relationships and benefit from sharing experiences and information in a safe and private online space.
• Reminders & Notifications. Set reminders for important deadlines and get notified about them automatically in time to act.
• Personalized Checklists. Time-bound, student-specific information compiled into accessible lists.
• School Search Capabilities. The GreatSchools, Niche and DoDEA search function researches and aggregates schools in the next community where you PCS.

"This project would NOT have been possible without the generous support of USAA Foundation. They have walked beside us all along the way and underwrote this entire project. They have a true heart for military-connected children and families and SchoolQuest is only possible because of their vision and commitment to providing the very best support for our military families." ~Judy Glennon~

Here is a short clip of Judy explaining School Quest “We're really, really excited to introduce our relaunch and redesign of our school quest. Parent transition tool, okay. years ago, we had school quest, and it was a website and a repository of information. People could go into it and find information, but it was just it was a website, and you get to the website, you have to dig. And it linked to a lot of other things. But there was a lot of digging involved and our new platform, there's not a lot of digging involved. It's all we're trying to serve it up for you, so what we have on school quest, and it's just we have an academic tracker that will allow parents to monitor and plan their student's academic career. And it's designed for middle school and high school families, especially the academic tracker. We address exceptional needs children, we address kids who may be on a math pathway. We address topics for career and technical education, and so you pick the things that your student is interested in, or the things that you're interested in for your students, you put them in the grade that you want your students to take those things and it follows along the way.

And every one of these different categories in the academic tracker has three things… It has things to know, so that's where we put out general information and then sometimes very specific information about that topic. Questions to Ask, so if your student isn't interested in career and technical education, you just don't know what that is. There's a bunch of questions that you can ask and either of the school or some other parent that maybe have a child in that environment, ask a teacher, ask a friend, whatever. And then, Resources. So there are links to page after page of websites of MCEC resources, you'll find webinars that we've done on the topic there, links to podcasts that may be on that topic, just a ton of information in and that's just in the academic track. And then, when you first get to school quest, you know, every parent, we want them to set up their family dashboard, their profile, and you can have, you have then create a persona for each one of your students.”

For more information or questions about SchoolQuestTM,please email schoolquest@militarychild.org.