Emily Kessler - Attendance Ambassador at Marvine Elementary School

Emily Kessler is a graduate of Moravian College and spent her last semester as an Attendance Ambassador at Marvine Elementary School in Bethlehem Area School District. She recently earned a degree in Sociology with a concentration in Law & Society and a minor in Business Management.

Special thanks to our Marvine Elementary School Community School Partners for making this program possible:

• Communities In Schools of the Lehigh Valley
• Just Born Quality Confections

UWGLV: What are your most successful activities as an Attendance Ambassador?

Emily: Recently, we developed personal challenges for 23 high, at risk and chronically absent students. We organized a board to track their progress over a three week period and allowed the students to select their own prizes by achieving the goal of zero missed days for the rest of the month. 10 students achieved their goals and many others only missed one day!

At the beginning of the second quarter, we sent out a survey to all families and provided information on good bed time practices, transportation options, opinions for afterschool programming and additional information on resources available through the school. We received over 100 responses and collected a handful of valuable data that can be used to improve our programming and connect families with the assistance they might need.

UWGLV: How did you make an impact on individual students?

Emily: One of our April challenge participants showed commendable improvement in attendance. He had missed 15 days of school prior to the beginning of April - placing him in the "chronic" category. After attending school every day for the entire month, he dropped down to "at risk" status. For his April attendance prize, he was awarded outside lunch every day and was very excited about it. He looks forward to winning extra recess next month!

UWGLV: What were the overall outcomes and how did attendance improve?

Emily: Throughout this year, Marvine has consistently been at the top of the district charts with one of the lowest chronic absence rates. They are on track to finish this year at the same rate, if not better - improving from last year.

UWGLV: What have you learned from this experience?

Emily: One of my biggest takeaways from the year has been to meet people where they are and set reasonable and attainable goals. For some students, five absences or less is not an attainable goal and can be an ineffective way to motivate better attendance. I have also learned that small gestures can make a big impact - especially working with kids. They truly appreciate everything you do.


Emily along with Destiny (left) and Jocelyn (middle) handing out bracelets to students who missed no school for the month of April.


Bracelets handed out to students as an award for missing no days of school for a month straight.