December 1998 New Products Help Link School and Work
Integrating academic and community-based learning just got easier with the release of four new products in the Connections: Linking Work and Learning series, produced by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's Education and Work Program.
The four new products—Learning Site Analysis Form: Reference Guide; Integrated Workplace Learning Project; Survival Skills: A Guide to Making It on Your Own; and Learning in the Community: From A to Z—join three previously published products, all meant to help teachers bring work into the curriculum and take the curriculum to the workplace in a systematic, meaningful way.
"As high schools begin to use these products, we expect to see learning in the workplace become much more structured as well as more clearly documented," says Andrea Baker, NWREL senior associate and coordinator of product development for the Connections series. The Integrated Workplace Learning Project (IWLP) is a guide to helping students organize projects that connect school-based and work-based learning. A student planning guide takes students step-by-step through developing a proposal and making a work plan for their project. Examples from a sample project are integrated into the guide to help students see how ideas evolve. A teacher reference guide, which also contains a copy of the student planning guide, discusses the whats, whos, and whys of integrated learning projects, explains the steps in the student planning guide, and contains two completed sample student guides, one related to working with a fast-food restaurant manager, and one with an electrician.
"It has speeded up the communication and understanding of the tasks to be done," says David Mesirow, director of Portland Night High School, an alternative, time-shifted program for working students ages 16 through 20. Because 80 percent of the school's students are working 20 to 40 hours a week, the staff tries to integrate their work activities into the curriculum.
For instance, a Portland Night High School student working at a delicatessen needed a health credit. She and her teacher used the guide to plan and carry out a project researching relevant state food safety standards and the procedures and equipment used at her place of work to meet those standards. With the IWLP, says Mesirow, "each project has some continuity, some level of uniformity to it." This uniformity puts the teacher in a better position to assess the finished product.
The Learning Site Analysis Form: Reference Guide (LSAF) helps teachers and other staff members analyze a worksite to pinpoint the learning opportunities for students. The LSAF itself is divided into three parts: "Your Job," which helps paint a detailed picture of the skills and activities associated with the job; "The Workplace," which examines characteristics of the work environment; and "Learning on Site," in which the interviewer and interviewee brainstorm ideas about the ways students can acquire and/or enhance job-related and academic skills at the workplace. The associated reference guide defines the LSAF, discusses its uses, explains the purpose of each of the LSAF questions, and gives tips for a successful interview. Also included are four sample LSAFs completed with a veterinarian, electrician, fast-food restaurant manager, and elementary school teacher, as well as a blank master copy.
Buying a car, completing a lease agreement, choosing a health insurance plan, writing a resume, coping with difficult people, maintaining a sense of humor, registering to vote: Though diverse, these are all examples of skills students want to have in order to make their way in the world. Survival Skills: A Guide to Making It on Your Own identifies survival skills in seven areas—mobility, shelter, health, financial independence, communication, self-awareness, and community participation—and suggests community members likely to be qualified to certify that the student has demonstrated competency in a skill. The guide describes ways of teaching the skills using the community as a resource and provides useful tools such as fact sheets, orientation exercises, and an activity plan. Three completed sample activity plans illustrate steps students can take to learn and then demonstrate what to do in an auto accident, how to use the housing section of the classified ads, and how to develop an appropriate response to racism.
More informal than the other products in the Connections series, Learning in the Community: From A to Z covers in its brief, alphabetically ordered entries everything from "All Aspects of the Industry" to "Naysayers" to "Xenophobia." This fun-to-read guide is an "everything you always wanted to know" approach to community-based learning. Pithy, humorous examples, suggestions, discussions, and advice are meant to give readers information, answer their questions, spark their interest, and inspire them to try something new.
Three earlier Connections products were developed by NWREL in collaboration with Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based national nonprofit organization that promotes policies and practices that improve transitions between school and work. The Employer Recruitment and Orientation Guide, Job Shadow Guide, and Career Exploration Guide were described in the May 1996 Northwest Report.
Connections products can be ordered from NWREL's Document Reproduction Service by returning the Document Order Form in this newsletter.
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