Help wanted: future leaders
Secondary schools’ skill-building courses cultivate independent thinking
Nine students at Worcester’s East Middle School, under the direction of area business leaders, build bridges out of spaghetti and marshmallows. Through trial and error, the three teams of seventh graders span six inches between desks with structures that withstand the weight of a remote-control truck.
Twenty-one students from the Bancroft School in Worcester shape construction paper into three items that are most important to them. They then link them together to launch a discussion about group members’ similarities despite their different backgrounds.
The exercises seem like a bit of extracurricular fun. But the participants are building a set of skills that the business community has singled out as a key for their future employees - leadership abilities, creative thinking, collaboration and problem solving.
The bridge challenge, part of a nine-week course offered by the non-profit Citizens School, and the Peer Training Program for Bancroft students are two of many programs at the region’s public and private schools that prepare students to be good leaders, employees and citizens of tomorrow. And they address a growing concern both locally and nationally that today’s high school and college students aren’t ready for the workplace.
Ill-prepared for work
The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, a non-profit business group aimed at improving education to meet workforce demands, released a report last month highlighting Massachusetts employers’ dissatisfaction with young peoples’ workplace readiness skills. MBAE, a key MCAS proponent, noted that business leaders in its focus groups found young applicants lacked communication skills, ethics, workplace behavior standards, ability to work in teams, ingenuity, problem solving and multi-tasking skills. The business leaders’ concerns were mirrored in a national report conducted by several business organizations and also released in October. That study, based on a survey of 431 human resource officials, concluded, "The future workforce is here, and it is ill prepared."
Linda Noonan, managing director for MBAE, agrees that schools are doing creative things to imbue students with more decision-making experience and workplace skills. But the widespread need to improve their workplace readiness is a challenge that her group is pursuing with state education officials, now that MCAS has improved Massachusetts students’ academic achievements, she says.
One recommendation of the MBAE report is that all students be required to gain work experience through internships, paid employment or community service.
Bancroft stresses leadership
Scott Reisinger, headmaster at the private Bancroft School in Worcester, says his school has long worked hard at instilling leadership skills. It brings in business leaders as speakers and sends students out into the community as volunteers. Reisinger admits that Bancroft is not constrained by having to meet the demands of the MCAS tests.
The Peer Training Program recently completed by 21 Bancroft ninth through twelfth graders is a key focus for the school. Offered through the Anti-Defamation League, the program helps students live and work successfully in an increasingly diverse world, something the MBAE report singles out as important in today’s workforce. It begins with a two-day, 16-hour training session with follow-up classes throughout the year. The trainees then come up with ideas and work with those in lower grades at their school to pass along what they have learned.
Giving students a voice
In the public-school realm, Hudson High School is all about student decision-making. As a "First-Amendment school," it considers itself a laboratory for democracy, says Gail Lamere, the system’s school-to-career coordinator.
Organized in four career or interest-related clusters of 150 students, Hudson High is committed to helping students see the connection between school and career, Lamere says.
Hudson High also provides internships both within the school – in its copy center, for instance – and at outside businesses. It has other career exploration opportunities, such as the Women and Technology Program in which a WPI senior comes to the school and does a hands-on project with students. The program concludes with a tour of Intel Corp., a key supporter of the school.
Worcester public programs
In Worcester, the Citizens School, a national effort to provide after-school classes related to the workforce and citizenship taught by community volunteers, serves students at the East Middle School and the ALL School, according to Emily Stainer, interim campus director of the program at the ALL School.
The nine-week course last spring which involved the bridge construction was taught by four business volunteers from a business leadership program called the Leadership Engagement and Development Program (LEAD). The group also explored leadership issues with students such as conflict management, stereotypes, making a good first impression and diversity. They plan to do it again this spring.
Volunteer teacher Dennis O’Connor, Central Mass. district manager for Waste Management, says the middle school students were eager to learn leadership and collaboration skills. He cites a tremendous lack of creative thinking skills in the workforce he hires for Waste Management, and believes school programs like the Citizens School can make a difference.
David Elworthy, principal at Worcester North High School, says there’s a need for business-related programs like the current Junior Achievement of Central Mass. session in which a Banknorth volunteer will present economics to students. North High is one of five schools in the state chosen as a pilot school in a new federal program which asks high schoolers to sign a contract to take on a more rigorous program of classes.
The pilot program also seeks to bring in business leaders to talk about workplace readiness. Beyond the new pilot, North High has an extensive internship program in which half of its students are placed in work settings in their senior year.
Elworthy says the message from the business community is this: "You need to push yourself; don’t think you’re going to start when you come to us."
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