Adult Public Charter Schools and Career Pathways

Employer Engagement in Adult Charter Schools

Thanks David, I'm starting with a response on the employer engagement questions from your post.

YouthBuild believes this is really important and promising work, but it also entails lots of challenges. It's relatively easy for an employer to express dismay over the readiness levels of workers/young people coming into their sector or company. And relatively common for employers to express rhetorical interest in being part of the solution. But usually proves really difficult to meaningfully engage employer partners over the long term in ways that are really helpful for both sides of the partnership - the school and the employer/company.

Some YouthBuild programs have found success in starting the partnership at a lower bar of engagement and extending the continuum of engagement over time. A simple, low-risk, low-time, and limited resource ask that evolves over time to include more engagement with more partners from the company has proven effective. This evolution might include an invitation for a site visit to get to know the school, students and staff; an invitation to attend and celebrate graduation; an invitation to view a student portfolio demonstration; an invitation to participate in a community service event; an invitation to serve on a workforce advisory board; an invitation to serve as a mentor for a student; an invitation to serve on the Board; an invitation for engagement in contributing to curriculum / training review & development; and a full-fledged internship-hiring relationship.

Employer partners are often excited by the hands-on nature of our career development approach and inherently understand the value of on-the-job learning. We often ask partners to describe or share (when allowable) the training approaches they use with entry level works. And we offer the opportunity to co-construct curriculum-training models that combine the technical expertise they bring to the partnership with the youth development expertise that YouthBuild represents. The employer partner understands the specific skill requirements for their career pathways better than we do. And we understand how to support, empower, counsel, and develop young leaders that have experienced severe trauma. Employers are increasingly recognizing that the Opportunity Youth we enroll in our schools represents an increasingly large share of their customer base and potentially their employee base. So understanding the supports and engagement strategies we use in our schools benefits their corporate bottom line.

This work has proven particularly effective in our partnership with Starbucks that Simran mentioned in one of her posts earlier this week. Starbucks has provided us with access to world-class customer service training they use with their partners (employees) around the globe. And YouthBuild has been able to infuse our leadership development approach, community service model, and student support/engagement strategies throughout the curriculum. More details on this partnership and the Customer Service Excellence Training approach are described in a recent blog post I did on CTE pathways:
https://www.noodle.com/articles/what-to-look-for-in-career-and-technical-education-programs

Lastly, a big part of this work is how we recognize and celebrate the contributions of employer and community partners for their work. In additional to the ways that local programs and staff/students appreciate individual corporate volunteers and partners, it is also useful to connect employer partners to a broader collective movement of their peers. Two of the more effective national movements engaging and recognizing corporate partners for their support of Opportunity Youth are Grads of Life: http://gradsoflife.org/ and the 100,000 Opportunities Initiative: http://www.100kopportunities.org/

Scott Emerick

YouthBuild USA