Jenna Triano - Attendance Ambassador at Paxinosa Elementary School

Jenna Triano is a junior at Lafayette College, studying Chemical Engineering and also an Attendance Ambassador at Paxinosa Elementary School in Easton Area School District.

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

• Communities In Schools of the Lehigh Valley
• Crayola

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

Jenna: Some of my most successful activities as an Attendance Ambassador were meeting with the students and encouraging them to love coming to school, connecting with parents and family members to collaborate and help improve their child's attendance as well as creating flyers to send home to the families to remind them of the importance of their child attending school.

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

Jenna: For several consecutive weeks, I met with a fifth grader who had nearly 25 absences for the school year due to illness. She expressed that she loves coming to school but frequently feels left behind in the classroom due to her absences. Although the situation was out of our control, we were able to connect with her parents and teacher to come up with ways to improve her performance in the classroom when she is able to attend. I think being able to provide her with a support network made her feel more comfortable in the classroom. 

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

Jenna: Many students showed improvement in their attendance after me contacting their families only once!  Most, if not all, families just needed an update and simple reminder of how many absences their child had and to know that Paxinosa really cares about their child attending school every day.

UWGLV: What have you learned from this experience?

Jenna: From this experience, I've learned that there are a lot of potential reasons why students are missing school. There are a wide variety of challenges that families are facing that often makes it difficult to get their child to school every day. It's importnant to keep an open mind. I think my ability to approach the topic of attendance with families in a positive way went a very long way.