May 1996 Connecting the Worlds of School and Work
Do you believe that work-based learning is only for vocational students? That employers won't be interested? That setting up a work-based learning program is just too much trouble?Connections: Linking Work and Learning might just change your mind. Connections is a comprehensive set of products and services designed to help integrate academic and work-based learning. Produced by the Northwest Laboratory's Education and Work Program, Connections is intended to make work-based learning happen for all students and without headaches. Connections also fosters the involvement of employers, parents, students, and staff-all critical efforts to create effective and meaningful work-based learning programs.
"Connections is grounded in our belief that for all youth to achieve their full potential, they need a solid educational foundation that consists of academic, career development, and life survival skills," says Andrea Baker, project coordinator. "The Connections products enable a school or district to structure and document learning at the worksite so that those experiences happen with integrity and fit into a meaningful system."
Connections includes seven publications. Each publication has its own design and review team of representatives from school districts, business, and labor. In both design and content, the series reflects what is actually happening in successful work-based learning programs today.
The design makes the information easy to find and use. The information itself is practical and clearly presented through real-life examples, fact sheets, forms, margin notes, discussions of issues and strategies, and other formats.
Now available are the Employer Recruitment and Orientation Guide; the Career Exploration Guide for Staff, with a companion guide for students; and the Job Shadow Guide for Staff, also with a companion guide for students. These three products were developed in conjunction with Boston-based Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit organization that promotes policies and practices that improve transitions between school and work.
The 84-page Employer Recruitment and Orientation Guide is meant for school staff, including program coordinators and teachers. It includes:
- Strategies for recruiting and orienting employers
- A section on roles and responsibilities of work-based learning partners in different types of work-based learning experiences-field trip, job shadow, career exploration, internship, and extensive work-based learning
- A glossary of work-based learning terms
- Fifteen camera-ready fact sheets addressing topics such as liability, confidentiality, child labor laws, union involvement, and work-based learning's benefits for the employer
"I'm always concerned about laws and liabilities," says Wallace Cole, student-employer liaison at Alpha High School in Gresham, Oregon, noting that this is the first thing employers ask about. "The chapters on that are written very clearly and accurately. It really is the best information for an employer that I've seen."
Like all the products in the series, the Employer Guide is designed to be flexible and easy to use. The stand-alone fact sheets, for instance, can be used in presentations, orientations, or information packets for employers or employees."The fact sheets allow people to use the information as they see fit," says Dionisia Morales, the guide's primary author. "They might use all of them or they might use one."
A job shadow takes students through several hours at a worksite with an employee, observing and asking questions about the job and the workplace. The Job Shadow Guide for Students helps make the most of all important aspects of this experience: planning, interviewing, observing, reflecting, thanking, and evaluating. The companion Job Shadow Guide for Staff addresses both logistical and learning issues for coordinators and teachers, and includes many useful tools such as forms, fact sheets, tips, descriptions of roles and responsibilities, and others.
During a career exploration, a student spends 10 to 30 hours at a worksite over several days or weeks, observing, interacting, doing hands-on activities, and completing written assignments related to the experience. The Career Exploration Guide for Students has activities for structuring each aspect of learning that occurs on a career exploration: information gathering, anticipating, interviewing, describing, observing, noticing, examining, reflecting, thanking, and evaluating. The Career Exploration Guide for Staff is structured similarly to the staff guide for job shadows.
"At first, the student guide wasn't easy for our kids," says Pam McAdams, worksite coordinator at CE2 Alternative School in Coos Bay, where the guide was field-tested. "But because it made them think, they got more out of their time at the worksite. When we first used it, it was a good lesson in the more you put into something, the more you get out."
This fall, the Learning Site Analysis Form will be available. It is devised to help school and worksite staff identify the learning potential at a worksite. The form is divided into three parts: job profile, worksite profile, and academics. The job profile addresses the job's responsibilities and educational and training requirements, and how various types of skills are applied at the job. The worksite profile looks at the tools and materials, technology, organizational structure, evaluation system, physical and clothing requirements, and community impact of the worksite. The final section looks at how various academic subjects are related to the job and worksite. Throughout the form, concrete examples in the margins help stimulate ideas. An accompanying support guide, which includes completed sample forms, explains what the form is for, who should use it, when, and how.
Like the Learning Site Analysis Form, Integrated Learning Projects will consist of a short form and a longer support guide. Integrated Learning Projects helps teachers and students work together to create a project that links school with work-based learning. The support guide explains various aspects of project-based learning.
Two more publications still under development are the Survival Skills Guide and Community-Based Learning from A to Z. The skills guide will identify critical skills, explain strategies for recruiting those who can certify a skill, and offer a format that takes students from the point of identifying a skill to getting it certified. Community-Based Learning from A to Z is a kind of superglossary on the topic. Written in an entertaining style, it enlightens readers on meaning of jargon, buzz words, and acronyms, and lays out the basic issues and concepts in the field.
For each of the publications, NWREL's Education and Work Program offers a corresponding workshop. Other types of work-based learning technical assistance, both short- and long-term, are also available.
To order the products currently available, search the NWREL Products and Publications Database. The Employer Recruitment and Orientation Guide is $18; the Career Exploration Guide for Staff, with a companion guide for students, is $19.95. Packages of 25 student guides are $150. The Job Shadow Guide for Staff, also with a companion guide for students, is $19.95. Packages of 25 student guides are $175. Watch future issues of the Northwest Report to order other products in the Connections series.
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