A typical lesson for middle school students participating in the PATHmakers program might find them learning about electrical transmission using batteries, strings of Christmas lights and various liquids to test their relative conductivity.
But the learning doesn’t stop there. In the weeks following, through the Career Pathways program, those same students might visit the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority to see how engineers test water quality with conductivity meters that work on the same principles.
Both programs are part of the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh’s Opportunity Pathways initiative, which targets underserved middle and high school students either after school or during nonacademic periods throughout the school day. PATHmakers classes take place weekly, from October through April. The program dovetails with Career Pathways, which organizes field trips, including visits to colleges and post-secondary training programs and employer site visits. Last year, students took 20 different field trips.
Now in its fourteenth year, the middle school Pathmakers program is being offered in eight schools spanning the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), Woodland Hills School District and the Propel Charter Schools network. The high school program, which is kicking off its third year, is in four high schools, all part of PPS.
The high school curriculum also is offered in virtual sessions and in partnership with Steel City Squash, a nonprofit athletic organization, said Dawnise Kozen, Director of Opportuniity Pathways. She said the Y is open to working with others and the virtual programming is open to any applicant on a space available basis.
Interested schools or educators, “just need to reach out to us, and we can see how we can make it work. We’re open to building new relationships,” Kozen added.
Students interested in the virtual sessions also should contact the Y. Kozen said all necessary course materials are delivered to their homes and participants are eligible for Career Pathways field trips.
In the PATHmakers programs, “Almost all of our activities fall along the lines of a STEAM curriculum,” said Kozen. “But basically, what we’re trying to do is have our students exposed to income sustaining careers. We connect every one of our activities to a career.”
The focus isn’t strictly on science, Kozen noted. A technology session might introduce students to coding, for example, or a math lesson might incorporate personal financial skills like budgeting.
And just as the lessons and fieldtrips build on each other, so do the middle and high school experiences. “In middle school, it’s about exposure; In high school, we help create pathways,” Kozen said. “There’s a career component to everything we do.”
