Partnering Education and Industry to Prepare Students for the Workforce

Over the last ten years, my school district, the Anaheim Union High School District, has grown their career mentoring program, called AIME, in which we partner with local businesses, government agencies, and non-profits to provide career mentoring and internships to our students. We have had over 100 businesses participate in these efforts, and they enjoy working with our students and are regularly impressed with the caliber of the young people who will make up the workforce of tomorrow. Throughout our county there are several organizations working towards a similar mission: The CEO Leadership Alliance of Orange County, Vital Link, Orange County United Way, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and others. The Disneyland Resort has also made generous donations to AIME and other programs in the community to support workforce development.

While these efforts have made great progress, the number of students who participate in these work-based learning efforts is slim in comparison to the overall student population. In addition, the business community and the educational system often remain siloed, and work-based learning programs seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Educational entities, including the K12 system, community college, and universities, have their own standards, operating procedures, unions, and government requirements, making it challenging to collaborate. Legal requirements, risk management, and the bureaucracy of creating board-approved agreements can slow down the process of partnering, which leads to resistance in moving these relationships forward. All of this means slower progress towards meeting the needs of our students as well as the workforce needs of our local regions.

There are several promising practices that may lead us towards a stronger partnership with the business world and greater student participation in work-based learning. For example, our school district has implemented the Career Preparedness Systems Framework (CPSF) to align our educational goals with workforce readiness. This framework focuses our efforts around three main drivers: Youth Voice and Purpose, Technical Skills, and 21st Century Skills. By addressing 21st Century Skills in every classroom (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and character) we are providing skills that we know will be important regardless of a student’s career choice. Our focus on the second driver, technical skills, not only ensures that students will have relevant skills they can cite on their resumes once they finish their education, it also helps teachers identify the skills in their curriculum that will lead to job-readiness and brings relevance to classroom learning. Finally, by allowing Youth Voice and Purpose to guide each student’s educational journey, we are avoiding tracking students towards particular pathways based on our perceptions of those students, and we are empowering students to become part of their communities to influence positive change. Our focus on career readiness does not just take place in Career Technical Education pathways, rather it is implemented across the curriculum.

We are in the early stages of implementing the CPSF, but believe it will be a positive step towards preparing our future workforce for success. Our business partners agree that drivers such as the 5 Cs are well worth focusing on, as they will help students succeed in any industry. In addition, UC Irvine has reported that our students who attend their university have higher average GPAs when compared with students from other districts, and are more likely to continue their education beyond the first year of college. We believe that our focus on transferrable career skills has helped students prepare for success in both their college and career pursuits.

Another promising example of successful partnerships between education and industry is that of apprenticeships. Whereas traditional apprenticeships were associated with building, manufacturing, and other trades, apprenticeships are now being implemented in high-tech fields, such as computer science and biotechnology. In an apprenticeship, the employer and educators agree on the skills that apprentices will learn, and the apprentice works for a wage while receiving instruction aligned with the apprentice’s experience in the workplace. If the student meets the standards of the apprenticeship, they are hired to work for the company. Our district, as well as the Orange County Department of Education, is working on implementing apprenticeships at the high school level.

It is time for education and industry to become true partners in preparing our future workforce. While CTE educators have long been working towards these partnerships, it is time to orient our entire educational system towards career and life readiness. I applaud the efforts of our local nonprofits and corporate partners as we work toward a common vision of workforce readiness. Considering that our students will spend most of their lives working in their careers, let’s focus on career preparedness as the end goal and let that drive our school and district improvement efforts to guide students towards purposeful, fulfilling lives.

My Startup Routine

Many productivity experts recommend a routine for getting started on your work each day. I have found this helpful in avoiding resistance and overcoming procrastination. I also find that using this routine helps me get into a state of flow more often, and short of that it definitely helps me focus on my work.

Here is my startup routine:

Turn on my computer
Start music (this helps me focus – I pick music I am familiar with that will not become a distraction)
Preview schedule and Current Initiative (see article on Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forster for more information about the concept of a “Current Initiative”)
Check deadlines on my calendar. If I have any deadlines, I add the associated tasks to the top of my task list.
Review Today view in my task manager, Things
Prepare for any meetings for the day
Clear inboxes
Pause and decide what’s next

Regarding item # 6, preparing for meetings, I set up a note-taking template for each meeting. I will post about this template in a future post. Being prepared for each meeting helps me be more productive during those meetings, and provides me with the resources and key links so I can jump right into the conversation. In addition, this prevents me from having to stop working ahead of each meeting to prepare.

I highly recommend developing a startup routine. Having a startup routine helps me in getting past any resistance to work and helps me quickly find focus.

Book Review: Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forster

I recently read Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forster. I came across this book as a suggested reading from Kourosh Dini after reading his book and going through his course Workflow Mastery.

Forster incorporates some of the aspects of Getting Things Done, but questions many aspects of modern time management, such as the idea of prioritization. With prioritization, Forster writes that we may never get to some of our projects. This rang true for me. Forster states that our daily work should amount to as much incoming work as we get in a day. He therefore suggests putting a one day buffer between tasks, so that any incoming work today gets added to tomorrow’s list. For today, if you are following his guidelines, you should be working on a closed list of items that amounts to a day’s work. The term closed list means you are not adding any additional items to the list, although of course you would need to make an exception for urgent items. He also addresses how to avoid urgent items in the in the book as well.

I have been using his strategies since I read the book a couple of months ago. I find that it is very well suited to using Things as my task manager, since a key feature of Things is the Today view. As I suspected, I immediately noticed that I have far more work to do in a day than could possibly be completed. That is one of the advantages of this strategy – Forster writes that organizing our day this way helps us to gauge our workload. When things are not going well, he suggests three questions: Am I working efficiently enough? Do I have too much work? Am I giving enough time to my work?

Considering my own situation, I do need to work on getting to a manageable workload. First and foremost, I am working on cleaning up my project list and considering what I can commit too. This is another concept I liked from Forster’s book – being committed to what we have agreed to do. I tend to have many projects and ideas that are in the “Someday/Maybe” category that are not moving forward. Rather than having this type of clutter in our systems, Forster suggests having one “Current Initiative.” For most people, clearing their backlog of projects will be their first Current Initiative, but once that is done, we can focus on those projects that are important, but have been lingering.

Reading this book also helped remind me of several key strategies for avoiding procrastination, which definitely plays a role in my overloaded to-do list. For example, Forster recommends doing a little bit on each project often, rather than long stretches of work while all of your other projects languish. I definitely recommend this book as a complement to Getting Things Done and other productivity books.

Apps Critical to My Workflow

To set the context for the other posts on this blog, I wanted to share the apps that I use on a daily basis to get my work done, since I will often reference them in my posts.

DEVONthink

I recently began using DEVONthink as a replacement for Evernote, my note-taking app of choice for many years. I was drawn to DEVONthink because the updated version of Evernote did not have some of the functionality of the legacy version, and I did not want to use the legacy version over the long term. In addition, I love that DEVONthink can act as both a place for your notes as well as your project files, which I now store in the same place. I can also access all of my files via the mobile app. Finally, the artificial intelligence in DEVONthink is impressive in terms of predicting where I want to store files, as well as in finding items I am searching for.

Drafts

Drafts is an app that you can use on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to take quick notes. The beauty of this app is that when you open it, you are presented immediately with a blank page and can begin typing your thoughts without getting distracted by opening a new document or navigating an organizational structure. Once you type your notes, you can then decide what to do with them through various actions, such as sending them as text messages, sending them to another app, creating a calendar event in your app of choice, and more.

I use Drafts to take quick notes throughout the day, as well as to write emails before sending them. When I process my inbox in Drafts, the notes I created become either tasks, reminders, journal entries, calendar events, etc. based on the content of the note. Drafts is a great way to record ideas before you know what you want to do with them.

Due

Due is another task manager, but its value is in reminding you of tasks at the precise time they need to be done. I use Due to manage tasks that must be done at a certain time of day, including reminders such as when to put the trash out for collection, taking medications, and other critical tasks. Whereas Things helps me keep my projects moving, Due helps me to remember time-sensitive tasks.

Fantastical

Fantastical is my favorite calendar app, and works across all Apple platforms. The app features a very easy way to enter new calendar events, using natural language and displaying the details of the event as you typ. There are lots of other features, many included in the free app, although I subscribe to the app to have features like multiple calendar sets, event templates, and more.

Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestro is a program on the Mac that allows you to create keyboard shortcuts to trigger automations. I use it to create setups so that I can use keyboard shortcuts to open all of the programs and windows I use in various contexts, such as at work, reviewing finances, writing, and more. In addition, I use it to quickly manage windows on my two screens, as well as provide a several other conveniences.

LaunchBar

LaunchBar is an alternative to Spotlight on the Mac, and allows you to quickly open programs, find files, access your clipboard, and much more. By simply pressing a keyboard short cut and typing what you want, you can quickly open apps on your Mac, switch between open apps, search for files, and more.

MindNode

MindNode is my mind mapping tool of choice. I use it when I am gathering ideas for a project. I love the ease of use and attractive design of the mind maps. This app works on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

PopClip

PopClip, an app for the Mac, provides a pop-up menu when you select text, from which you can select various options for taking action on the item. Besides offering ways to quickly cut or copy text, I can send highlighted text to Things, DEVONthink, Messages, and other apps. This makes it very easy to take my to-dos from a note in Drafts and move it into Things, fore example.

TextExpander

TextExpander is an app for Mac and iOS that allows you to create text snippets, which you trigger using keyboard strings. For example, when I want to add salutations at the end of an email, I can either type “.ty”, which adds “Thanks, Scott” to the end of the email (for casual emails), or “.sinc” to add “Sincerely, Scott Reindl.” While this is a very simple example, TextExpander can also create text templates with fill-in boxes for additional information, and much more.

Things

Things is my task manager of choice. Like most task managers, Things allows you to create to-do lists for multiple projects, tag items, set start and due dates, and more. I enjoy Things simple design and the ease of use. In addition, each project allows you to keep notes, which appear right at the top of the project page, making it easy to keep notes, add links to my projects in DEVONthink and Google Drive folders, and more.