You CAN teach an old dog new tricks! J 7/6/2012
I have been working on getting Accumold employees to understand their health care information available to them online. This includes registering for the insurance company’s website and browsing through many of the features. The process took about 12 minutes for an average employee, but it was interesting to analyze the differences between skills of an employee who got it done in 5 minutes and an employee who took more than 20. The skill sets among the employees are so different that it was impossible to keep them all together through the process. Because of that, I found myself explaining what needs to be done to every person individually. Wow was that a flashback to a classroom of teenagers! This experience has reconfirmed the need to have multiple tasks ready, more importantly with varying ability levels. With a “classroom” of 5-6 adults here, it was easily manageable for me to work one-on-one. With a classroom of 20-30 teenagers, it’s a whole different story. Allowing a child to sit there with nothing to do while I help another student is asking for trouble. A goal I have set for myself this year is to keep even the most successful students challenged every day. Challenged doesn’t necessarily mean busy. I don’t think the kids need more work; they just need more applicable work that fits their level of thinking.
One way for businesses to get involved in classrooms could be becoming a business sponsor (whether for the whole school, or a few particular classrooms). Rather than seeking assistance from big-name national companies, why not look for support from local companies who would be interested in hiring our graduates? Accumold has an amazing program (Accumold Scholars) to sponsor students through their education at DMACC with the intentions of hiring the students as full-time employees upon successful completion of the collegiate program. Students are much more likely to join such a program if they’re aware of the company and the program they have to offer. Especially since many students don’t have a clue what their options are out there—other than being a teacher, vet, doctor, lawyer, or social worker, they think their options are limited. They need to be sparked with information to get them thinking outside of the box.
Content-specific career fairs could be a fun way for students to explore professions specific to their favorite field of study. At such a career fair, emphasizing which subject areas are most frequently used on the job and categorizing booths according to these subgroups could help students navigate throughout areas in which their most interested. Accumold, for example, could fit under a few different categories—math for the measurement and numbers, art for the drawings and details, engineering for the composition of mold/part dimensions, business for the behind-the-scenes work, as well as trade work with the steel mold/tool constructing. Recognizing that there isn’t much of any outdoor work or history/government involved, it would help students sift through many options as well as enlighten them to prospective employers related to their favorite field of study. The more students are exposed to these types of opportunities, the more their creative hats will get thinking for possible career options.
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