Activities are a key component of tracking your work to tell your story and allow funding for your efforts to continue. People in the system are called participants because, through your efforts, they “participate” in the activities and services you offer. Thus, accurately setting up Activities in Student SupportTracker is crucial.
Here is a list of potential activities and services in Student SupportTracker.
The Activities section is where the services related to participants are created and managed. There are multiple types of Activities. These include Scheduled, Drop-In, Unscheduled, and Service activities:
- Scheduled - activities with a regular schedule and a fixed roster throughout the term.
- Drop In - scheduled activities in which anyone can attend and participate.
- Unscheduled - these activities don't have a schedule, and the participants vary from one event to another.
- Service - on-demand services provided to individuals.
Here is more information about each type of activity related to your work with students experiencing homelessness.
Services: Most services offered to students are just that—services. Students' needs are usually not planned and thus not usually scheduled ahead of time. Services may include bus passes, food vouchers, backpacks, school supplies, and clothing. Services are the most common and easiest activity type to set up and record for a student. See the Creating Services article to learn more.
Drop-In: Does your program offer any drop-in services, such as counseling? For example, if counseling is available from your staff from 3–5 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a Counseling activity with a Tuesday/Thursday session would be set up. When a student shows up and gets some help, it is easy to record their participation once the activity is set up. See the Creating Drop In Activities article to learn more.
Unscheduled: As students may need some help or advice or simply an ear to listen or a shoulder to lean on at any time, an activity such as Tutoring might be set up as an unscheduled activity. At any time, a student could come in to get some academic assistance, and you can then quickly record their participation in the unscheduled Tutoring activity. While primarily used for tracking services offered to students, Student SupportTracker can also be used to track efforts beyond the student level. Such activities can include coordinating with other agencies, attracting and retaining homeless youth, and providing supplies to non-school facilities. The time your staff spends on these unscheduled activities can also be tracked. Note that these non-student-related services would be recorded on the Admin site, not a school site. See the Creating Unscheduled Activities article to learn more.
Scheduled: Two examples of Scheduled activities that may be relevant to your program are Family Picnic and Professional Development for district staff. Both activities have a set time and would probably have a list of expected attendees. When such activities are set up, recording who has attended as expected and who has not will be simple. See the Creating Scheduled Activities article to learn more.
The setup of each activity type is a bit different, and each is described in detail in these separate documents.