Projects that our Future Ready Leaders (FRL) teams undertook this year ranged from career fairs and senior student debriefings to step-up days and workshops on career exploration and college planning.
“All of the projects provided the kinds of experiences students need in order to think about their next steps after high school and find out about the post-secondary and career paths available to them,” said Consortium Director of Organizational Strategy and Special Projects Jenn Sethman. Sethman organizes FRL in collaboration with Aaron Altemus, Director of Student & Professional Learning and Gina Barrett, Director of Partnerships.
“These projects also are a great way of augmenting the excellent future readiness programming our participating districts are all trying to offer,” Sethman added.
For the 2023-24 school year, FRL assembled teams of students and educators to collaborate on designing new ways to expand future readiness opportunities and experiences for their schools. The Consortium brought the teams together three times during the academic year to brainstorm ideas, receive feedback from their peers, exchange ideas across districts, and engage with employers or post-secondary representatives who shared information about jobs or academic programs.
Participating districts this year included: Allegheny Valley, Brownsville Area, California Area, Cornell, Elizabeth Forward, Hampton Township, Montour, and South Allegheny.
As always, community partnerships played a critical role in FRL, with post-secondary institutions and businesses hosting site visits where students and educators learned about the region’s academic programs, employment opportunities, and the requirements for pursuing them.
Hosting visits this year were: Google, Ironworkers Local #3, ARM Robotics, PennDOT, and UPMC.
“The interactions with our partners are always so beneficial, both to students trying to plan their futures and to educators, who they often turn to for guidance,” said Barrett, who organizes the site visits.
