It is easy to forget, amid the near mania associated with college admissions and acceptance, that many students do not have the aptitude or indeed funding to attend college, and will need to work directly after 12th grade. This is obviously an important awareness to have as a teacher, because the workplace is currently very different from the classroom, yet we have an obligation to prepare our students not only for the academic rigors of college, but also for the realities of employment.
So what exactly does “work ready” mean? Surprisingly that is quite a hard definition to come by.
However, most employers agree is that generally speaking the workplace requires
Pretty nebulous stuff, curriculum-wise, outside of employment preparedness skill-specific courses, but nonetheless helpful indicators of what employers expect.
Some employers also speak to more specific skill such as punctuality, communication and team-work as being essential skills they expect high school graduates to demonstrate in order to be employable. However, with all the good will in the world, as an educator you will not be able to materially influence what your students learn without additions or changes to the curriculum.
But there are a number of things we can focus on to better prepare students for the workplace no matter what subject we are teaching:
Teamwork is often named as an essential skill by employers, and frankly is also essential to being a functioning adult in life in general. Understanding how to communicate, compromise and share credit helps students make valuable contributions to projects. Employers want youngsters to at least understand how people work in teams with little or no oversight.
Some ways to encourage your students to respond to teamwork projects include:
Linear learning (rote repetition) can often result in an inability to understand the context of a problem, and consequently an inability to find lateral, creative solutions. Employers by definition are not going to provide answers; they expect employees to provide solutions. So self-directed learning, such via e-learning platforms is often a useful way to invert the normal teaching model and challenge students to come up with their own solutions in their own way.
One way of encouraging a problem-solving approach is to visualize the issues, some tips include:
There is little doubt that learning skills such as these are not only good for work, but also good for life. It is rewarding to know that when focusing on developing workplace skills we are not only creating employees, but ultimately well-rounded adults.