OBJECTIVES
The primary objectives of the POPScholar Award are as follows:
1. To provide financial support: The scholarship will award $1000 to selected McKinney-Vento students, helping to alleviate the financial burden associated with college education.
2. To promote higher education: By targeting high school seniors who have faced hardships, we aim to encourage them to pursue higher education and empower them to positively impacttheir communities through education.
3. To foster collaboration: POPScholar will collaborate with school stakeholders within the school division to identify deserving McKinney-Vento students who meet the scholarship criteria.
4. To create a memorable experience: The scholarship recipients will be surprised with the award during a school day in front of their peers, recognizing their achievements and providing them with a special moment of celebration.
5. Keep the fight going: We hope that the scholarship recipient will embrace this moment and use it as fuel to keep going. We want our POPScholars to know that “someone is always watching”. Regardless of your circumstances, we want our POPScholars to continue to persevere and to know that if they continue to Make It “POP”, they will be successful in life.
6. Building a Teacher Pipeline: Higher learning institutions are not producing the amount of teachers that did in the past for various reasons. For every POPScholar awarded with $1,000, TheTeachers of Promise Institute will receive an additional $500 to sponsor students that are graduating college headed towards their first year of teaching. The Teachers of Promise Institute was established by Wade Whitehead in 2004 to identify and recognize the best prospective teachers from college and university schools of education across Virginia.