Faculty Explores Businesses to Better Prepare Students
October 9, 2017
Teachers and administration are stepping into the business realm to learn how to better help students become more career-ready.
The faculty visited a dozen businesses in York county during the half-day in-service on September 22.
Businesses, like Think Loud, LLC, the YGS Group and Crescent Industries, opened their facilities for discussion in career readiness and how to modernize what the teachers are teaching.
Assistant principal James Sterner said the process of contacting and choosing businesses took months to complete.
“Over the summer, I spent a long time researching businesses that were in the area, and there’s tons of awesome businesses. Just picking through those businesses, finding businesses that would work with us, reaching out and meeting with them, visiting and touring their plants which was awesome, and creating a structure for when the staff go out for the visit,” said Sterner.
Sterner stresses the need for student preparation during high school in order to ensure success after it.
“…the purpose of a high school is to prepare students to be successful after high school,” said Sterner. “Whatever that success looks like for each individual student, it’s important that we as a high school are preparing them for that success. For some students, that’s immediately into college. For other students, that could be the military For other students, it may be going into a workplace… or whatever their passion is, but we want to make sure that we’re encouraging students into all of those areas. As educators, that’s our goal, but we’re educators, and not everyone wants to be an educator. It’s important that we, as teachers, as educators, go out and see what opportunities are out there.”
Seeing connections between the professional realm and school curricula was key for teachers like Courier adviser Sara Mooney.
“Overall, especially after hearing from YRK Magazine’s Breanna Shorten, students must be able to create their own project plans and deadlines and should be able to manage the creation of an employer-driven product without a complacent work ethic,” said Mooney. “Mr. Hare and I are hoping to create even more opportunities for this as we restructure the Courier Digital Media course this year, possibly by creating a social media planning system like YRK Magazine uses.”
English teacher Erica Littleton knows how important motivation in any division of the workforce is.
“What I think is important to stress is that any student who cares about work and is responsible and is dedicated and motivated can absolutely go far in life. Whether [they’re] heading to college or headed to a job, or they’re headed to a vo. tech. type school… I feel like being driven and motivated, those types of skills absolutely connect and transfer to pretty much anything anyone is going to do in their future,” said Littleton.