Empowering Students: Tanika Moore's Journey with Talent Search at Dunbar and Harper High (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: My name is Tanika Moore, and I'm the project specialist for Talent Search at Dunbar and Harper High School. And I was once a tutor, and I started out as a tutor, and I basically have a lot of duties. I recruit, I help plan college tours, I sit with other staff at the schools in a post-secondary education team, we plan, you know, post-secondary college tours, anything considering post-secondary education. We hear a lot of students say, I'm not going to college, I don't have the money for it. And so we show them that you can go to college, you don't have to worry about the finances as much as you think. You know, you have various options and various ways to pay for school. And so we want to show them that college is attainable for a low-income student or a first-generational youth. Some families don't know to the fullest extent of what Talent Search can do, what any TRIO program can do. And I think sometimes we take it for granted. And this program, like I said, it not only gets children to see that college is attainable, that you can go, and that post-secondary education isn't just a four-year university. And so that's what I'm also driving into students' heads. You know, post-secondary education is two-year school, four-year school, anything that helps you further your education and your professionalism. And I believe that students will benefit from Talent Search and that it should continue. I didn't initially see myself that I would be helping students. I never made the connection. All this time when I was younger, I realized that I did love to educate people, I loved to read, I loved to write. And now that I'm older, I'm like, oh, all of this pieces together. And so I never initially saw myself, you know, helping students in this capacity, but I am so grateful that I got the chance to do so.