When we opened our first bank account to launch Apprentice Learning, Eastern Bank in Ashmont was our choice for a community bank. We were warmly welcomed by Roxann Cooke, who is now Senior Vice President and Regional Manager.
Eastern Bank has supported Apprentice Learning’s growth as a banking partner and as a funder. We are thrilled to announce this $10,000 award in support women and girls, for our City Summer Internship program for rising ninth grade girls.
Taylor Norman, Apprentice Learning Program Coordinator at the Boston Teachers Union School was invited to give a parting speech to the eighth grade class. We were inspired and wanted to share her words.
As you launch into high school, you will have a chance to choose your friends, choose your interests, and choose what path you will take. Although these choices aren’t permanent, make sure you’re building a firm and steady foundation. You have the option to start over and be who you want to be, without questions, or maybes. So use that opportunity and take action. Don’t wait for the approval of your peers, because they’re figuring it out, just as you are. Make your plan and ask for help. Tell them about your plan of action, and that you can’t do it alone.
I’ve helped many of you explore your career interests and earn an apprenticeships and summer jobs through Apprentice Learning. As that process unfolded, I got to learn more about each of you, and what makes you so unique. Like the fact that the majority of you like white bread because wheat bread is too crumbly. Some students like to blurt out their answers, while others refused to answer when called upon. How many of you like to help adults but don’t like being told what to do by adults. About ½ of you like an even layer of Mayonnaise on both slices of the bread while others like a big glob of Mayo on ONE side…
But what made you even more similar, was the fact that each of you had goals and dreams to be someone different, and to be a better version of your 6th grade self, or your 7th grade self. And even for the few students that I’ve met for the first time this year, better versions of your 8th grade selves.
Each year you made improvements, through action. And I’ve watched. We’ve watched.
I remember many of you saying, “Ms. T, I’m going to be in your class next year because I want a summer job. Just wait!” So I waited. We’ve waited. Not for the opportunity to get you employed for the summer, but for the lifetime of opportunities that await you…when you realize that you don’t need us as much as you did before.
Getting up for school every day, completing those assignments, making a pact to stay after school with your friends so you can all receive tutoring, supporting the one person in your crew who may have needed to attend. That demonstrates empathy, teamwork, proper planning, care, and commitment. You’ve stuck together, refusing to leave your classmates or friends behind. But keep in mind, it’s all about action.
Each year, apprentices interested in science and health careers can “try out” these careers with our work site partners including New England Baptist Hospital. But our end goal is to help students find engaging summer internships and experiences to further their skills and interests. For the past four months, we have been helping apprentices apply to a variety of programs.
One program, Summer Science Academy, is especially successful for our apprentices. We have 18 alums currently working as paid interns in this multiyear pathway program. But it all starts with Summer Science Academy. The program is geared for rising ninth graders and is the brainchild of Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Center for Community Health and Health Equity. It is a rigorous and competitive application process that includes a written essay, report card submission, and an interview. This year eight apprentices were accepted to the program.
Here’s a description of this year’s program from the Center for Community Health and Health Equity newsletter:
Summer Science Academy 2016 Theme: Stress Reduction
SSA
Our Summer Science Academy (SSA) program is about to begin. SSA is an intensive science instructed program that offers science and health related classes, workshops, field trips, and the opportunity to work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital over the summer vacation to rising high school freshmen. The program aims to create exposure to the field of health and science related higher education and careers.
Each year the six week program follows a theme that guides the structure of the lessons. This year, the theme is stress reduction. The program will focus on empowering adolescent students by helping them understand stress in neurological, physiological, and biological aspects. The common belief that continual elevated stress levels affects adolescent behavior serves as major factor for the program to help students learn to combat stress effectively. Most of the students who participate in the program reside within the priority neighborhoods of Boston. It is understood that people who live in low-income neighborhoods experience higher levels of stress than their peers who do not.
Enhancing the youth’s understanding of stress, where it originates, and how to deal with it will contribute to the overall greater health and success of the students. With assistance from the Benson Henry Institute, the students will have four sessions focused on stress reduction strategies and coping methods. The lessons will also cover important but less talked about factors of stress such as, test taking and its relation to stress, and dealing with stress within relationships.
Thanks for your participation in the spring apprenticeships. Our students benefit tremendously from the time you spend mentoring and teaching them. Many of our alums return with vivid recollections of their experience so we know it has an impact on a young person’s outlook on the world. We appreciate you!
Partners hosting this spring’s 21 apprentices are:
Ace Hardware in Roslindale
Birth Street Home & Garden
Boing Toy Shop
Caramelo (Thursday)
Fresh Hair (Thursday)
Horizons for Homeless Children
Game Engagement Lab at Emerson CollegePet Cabaret
Microsoft Store (7)
Nazareth Childcare Center
Polka Dog Bakery
Rédgine’s Botanical Spirits
The Thrift Hop of Boston
Station8 Hair Salon
Week one is always the Week of Nerves for the apprentices. For most, it is the first time for independent interactions with adults who are neither families nor teachers. Our preparation emphasizes the importance of introducing oneself with a great smile, handshake and a clearly spoken name. On your part, if you can provide a clear overview of your business, a spot for backpacks and put them right to work! Please remind the apprentices to take off their coats.
Our staff will make brief workplace visits over the next six weeks. These check-ins are an opportunity for you to share any questions or observations with us and for us to convey any questions that have come up via the apprentice. Our aim is to make the most of both your and the students’ time.
Also, we’d like to arrange some time to interview you about your experience as a site partner. As our program grows to serving over 100 students in schools in Brighton and Jamaica Plain, you can help us attract new business partners. Please let us know if you would be willing to speak about your worksite partner experience.
Front and center in our curriculum and practice is the idea of teaching ‘content and skills related to the demands of real life,’ a phrase from Donald Kagan. We use the experience of the workplace to bring this into clear focus and create opportunities to practice these skills:
Apprentice Learning starts with explicit teaching and modeling in the classroom. Then students practice by videoing each other and offering critiques. Lastly, the workplace becomes the real world test where students have ample opportunities to practice in conscious and unconscious ways. To build learning, reflection is important. Watch one apprentice’s video here
Ready for work: are you listening?
Our eighth graders are truly excited to go to their first workplace but it may not always be immediately evident. Adolescent brains process information in wholly different ways than adults. Teachers know this but workplace supervisors may not. We teach our students a simple, effective strategy for interactions in the workplace to help them gain confidence speaking with adults they do not know.
Apprentices, show adults you are listening.
You are in school all day. Listening. It is crucial to learning. Throughout the day in the classroom, as you listen to the teacher, you look out the window, turn around in your seat or even close your eyes.
Still listening? Likely you are. Except when you switch to the workplace where communication is usually among adults, you want to be sure to give off a few signals. At work, unlike at school, communication typically occurs among one to four people. Showing them you are listening is especially important.
In a professional setting, when an adult gives you instructions, he or she will look for signals from you that you are listening and that you understand what is being said. That’s what adults expect of each other. Here’s how to Here are a few tips you can use:
Four simple signals.
Try it.
Use these signals every 10-20 seconds with adult professionals. Take turns using each one. It will help the adults understand you better. And it helps you learn, too.
It goes without saying that the last few years have seen some of the greatest economic growth since the 2008 downturn. Just last week, it was announced that close to 295,000 new jobs were created in the month of February. But with the growing economy has come a growing problem.
New attention is now being paid to what has been coined the skills gap in our country. The skills gap is growing disconnect between the skills that employers deem important to the workplace and the skills that new workers bring with them.
A January 2015 article in the Washington Post entitled, “Why so many college students are failing to gain job skills before graduation” pointed out that employers find recent college graduates are “severely lacking in some basic skills, particularly problem solving, decision making, and the ability to prioritize tasks.” Research done into the skills gap shows that while many college students believe they are prepared with these skills, their employers disagree.
We’ve reached a point where many of the newly created jobs are going unfilled. Even with years of technical training and specialized education, workers are lacking some of the most foundational skills required to be successful in the workplace.
Here in Jamaica Plain we are taking the skills gap head on. Skills are at the core of what we do at Apprentice Learning. Last week I observed our Apprentices at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University learn more about nano-materials and DNA then most of the people in my college graduating class, and that was only the orientation. An apprenticeship at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering is a parallel work experience, meaning that the apprenticeship is designed to mimic the work experience of professionals in the field. After their orientation, the Apprentices get right to designing. With just a set of bottle caps and magnetic chips, the Apprentices lived through a typical Wyss project. With far less formal education or training, the 8th graders used excellent communication skills and teamwork to accomplish their goal, the same kind of work skills that the highly trained scientists and engineers in the room use on a daily basis.
This kind of skills practice is true across all of our sites. An Apprentice at First Literacy practices organization while at the Game Engagement Lab at Emerson College they practice attention to detail. Helping customers at Boing Toy Shop entails good communication; while attentiveness and kindness is essential in the care of young children at Horizons for Homeless Children.
Employers in all fields believe these kinds of skills are essential employee success. I am proud to say that our 8th grade Apprentices are getting a head start. When they are at work, the experience they gain may not be specialized training in game development or bioengineering. Instead, they practice skills most valuable to the workplace, communication, punctuality, teamwork, and reliability, skills that will matter for life.
I wanted to share a recent blog post by my dear friend and mentor Deborah Meier. Deborah offers an enthusiastic review of a book by Susan Engel, “The End of the Rainbow.” In it. Ms. Engel asks, “What if we made the implicit goal of education happiness rather than monetary attainment?” It’s a fascinating viewpoint that gives all of us on the right and the left, pause for thought. Here’s my thought…
Apprentice Learning is not teaching career education just to help kids make money. We do want Apprentices to have options other than a low wage, low skill job. The skills we teach help young people navigate a complex adult world–one that inevitably includes working–and feel confident in many workplace cultures. These professional skills such as communication, self-advocacy, cultural sensitivity, etc. are valuable in many settings, including those outside of work. Academic skills alone are not adequate.
Our students are motivated to practice and learn because they are eager to work. They want to join the adult world. Most so they can make money. That’s their starting point.
Kids believe happiness and money are related. What they don’t fully understand is the strange ways they are. Beyond the lifelong pursuit of these skills, we hope our participants grow to understand that attaining happiness is more than just making money.
The popular press has reams of articles about how not to take things too seriously. In our business working with middle school students, sometimes, we have the opposite problem.
This is the midpoint of the school year—and the time when students edge up to the point of no return. Their toes are on the precipice of failing 8th grade. Warning notices go home this week that say ‘If the student cannot improve, completion of summer school will be required before the student may advance to high school. Staying back in 8th grade. That’s not good.
At home and at school, conversations with the student might go something like this, ”Why aren’t you taking this seriously?” At this point, not taking school—and their academic future—seriously what can we do to disrupt this downward spiral? All too often, the adults are puzzled and frustrated by this disengagement.
What does it take to create a seriousness of purpose for a student who is off track? What would spark their engagement? Many students have stellar qualities: they are organized, have strong interpersonal skills, many are punctual and reliable. But without the engagement engine these attributes are sleepers.
For a student relegated to spend five weeks from 8 am to 2 pm in a summer school classroom, what could make the experience worthwhile and valuable?
We see Apprentices who are engaged in their preparation for work and have a very high degree of seriousness. What’s the secret sauce?
Kurt Hahn, founder of the Outward Bound movement once said,
” …There are three ways of trying to win the young. There is persuasion. There is compulsion and there is attraction. You can preach at them; that is a hook without a worm. You can say, “you must volunteer.” That is the devil. And you can tell them, “you are needed” that hardly ever fails.”
Apprenticeships create a place in the world for students to feel needed. They are an invitation to work alongside and join an effort to be of service. Here’s what the Apprentices have to say,
“When my boss taught me how to check people out, I was so excited. I had really wanted to do it. It taught me how to operate a cash register and give people the correct amount of change. It was fun and helped me use my math skills in the ‘Real World’.” – Kaya, Apprentice at Boing! Toy Shop
This prepares us (8th graders) for high school life, not just high school but life itself. I came in here scared is worried—would anyone like me? Is everything gonna go by fast? Slow? It’s worth it because you have a good time and learn skills. I don’t think there was a single dull moment. We have a good time and I learned lots of useful skills. —Yanisa, Apprentice at Thrift Shop of Boston.
As educators, our charge is to create authentic learning experiences that provide a compelling reason for students to take their learning seriously. It’s high stakes learning with clear purpose: to be needed. Ideally, students understand that learning math can mean they will be useful in the world.
I dropped by the Apple Genius Bar, a help desk where Apple employees known as “Geniuses” fix just about any computer issue you bring them. I was called for my appointment by a young woman who introduced herself with a joke highlighting the fact that she was the only woman Genius at the Bar. I didn’t even notice until she made the joke. But in fact, of the 15 Geniuses there that evening, she was the only woman working behind the counter. In 2012, women made up only 26% of the labor force in computer and mathematics related fields. Unfortunately, until she mentioned it, I barely paid any attention.
There are a variety of reasons why there is a shortage of women in STEM related fields. I won’t pretend to understand them all. But one barrier for young women is a lack of motivation to even pursue STEM related professions. Many young women in school right now aren’t motivated because they struggle to even imagine themselves as engineers, businesswomen, or computer scientists. For many girls, without positive first hand experiences in those fields, this very idea never even crosses their mind. The solution then doesn’t end with solely creating equal spaces for women in those fields. It goes further to make sure that our girls are exposed to those careers as early and frequently as possible. By providing opportunities for girls to not only see these careers but to learn them through experience instills a mindset that they too can do STEM related work. The sense of competency and belonging that is created through these experiences provides girls the chance to fully imagine themselves in those careers and thus pursue STEM professions.
Fall apprenticeships are halfway complete and young women comprise more than half of our Apprentices. It important to recognize that at this point, they are thinking about their futures in some new ways. At New England Baptist Hospital, Apprentices are getting hands-on experience in medicine, learning about knee replacements with a biotech company while Apprentices at WGBH are exploring the future television production working on digital billboards. Our Apprentice at NorthStar Asset Management, an all-women organization, is learning about the stock market by competing with her mentors and co-workers in an online trading game, and winning!
We are watching the imaginations of our female Apprentices expand in remarkable ways as each of these young women begins to see themselves in professions they never considered before. This is the next step for the young women in our society: It’s about allowing them to step through the door of any profession and say, “I belong here.”
Make an immediate impact on the lives of Boston’s youth by supporting apprenticeships today. Your generosity empowers young minds and creates opportunities that will resonate for a lifetime.
