Please note that this transcript was auto-generated. We apologize for any minor errors in spelling or grammar.

[00:00:00] Here we go. Recording this presentation and we’ll open up. Um, we’ll send a follow up email, um, with the link to the recording along with information on receiving PDPs because you can receive, um, A PDP for this session. So today we are pleased and honored to welcome Dr. Scott Solberg as our guest speaker.

Uh, Dr. Solberg is a professor at the at Boston University, Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. With over 50 peer reviewed publications, four books, and over 30 keynote and invited plenary presentations. Dr. Solberg is internationally and nationally recognized for creating a new career development paradigm for K to 12 schools that focuses on enabling youth to develop their true potential by helping them navigate into the learning pathways needed to pursue their personal life goals.

Uh, this paradigm is best described in his book Making School Relevant With Individualized Learning [00:01:00] Plans, helping students create their own career and life Goals from Harvard Education Press, and his recommendations are being implemented in over 30 states as well as Singapore. Uh, Dr. Solberg consults regularly with federal, state, and district policy leaders, serves as vice president for research the industry led National Coalition for Career Development Center.

Co-directs the Boston University Center for Future Readiness Co-leads in international SEL Research Network, and serves in advisory roles with national organizations such as PBS Kits, castle and Intel. Spark. Over the course of his career, Dr. Solberg has received over $10 million in funding with his latest efforts, focusing on supporting Boston Public Schools’ adoption of ILPs and the launch of an annual research report showcasing the conditions of career readiness in the United States.

So we thank you so much, Dr. Solberg, for being here and sharing your expertise with our audience. All right, well, thank you. You’re welcome. So, so I’m noticing, we have a couple that we’re [00:02:00] looking at here and we have a bunch of a participants. Are they all able to speak or how does that work? Yes. So I need to unmute everybody.

Okay? Okay. All. So wanted to, to just get, I mean, we’re, we’re small enough that we can have a quick conversation and, and report around, but just wanted to get a sense of what you were hoping, um, to learn about today and also to make it a little bit more interactive, because otherwise it’s just, um, Jen and I staring at each other, which is fine, but we do that all the time.

We’re, we’re on Zoom more, more often than not. So, um, so John, I’ve got you first. Is there something you’re hoping that, that we’ll get today as a, as a, through this conversation?

John.

All right. Well, I see Lori. Lori, you want to tell us, do you have some ideas for today?

Are you able to come off mute?

I think you just have to [00:03:00] click on your little microphone. I had to promote Lori to panelists ’cause she had a. She was, um, to in order to, to talk. Yeah. So maybe the chat then too. Yep. Yeah. John’s still on mute as well. They’re, I don’t dunno if they’re able to get off. So, Laurie or John, are you able to come off mute?

Oh, it looks like Kevin and John bolted. John, did you wanna go give us some, some plots

we’re not hearing you. Hmm. So not sure Jen. Okay. They should. All right. All right. Well let’s use the chat box. Um, yep. Let’s use the chat. I also put in the Jamboard if you wanted to use that, but, um, it’s such a small group too. We can do the other, but some, some thoughts around, um, things that you would like to get at today, the things you wanna make sure we cover.

Would love to hear about that. Also, it’d be great if you could tell us which schools you’re [00:04:00] from, organizations.

Oh, mute is freezing apparently. Yeah. Okay. So, um, so John, early college programs great. Um, how early do you mean? Are you asking Kevin, how early do we do the, the My Cap work? Is that the idea?

Working with middle school and the My Cap. Fantastic. And we’ve got some activities for that as well. Hey John, good to see you. At least I can see you and Laurie. I don’t, can’t, can’t go and get the full interaction, but that’s all right. Um, any other thoughts? Laurie at Grafton. Awesome. And you’ve all gone through the, the My Cap orientation from Grafton.

Right.[00:05:00]

Michelle, nice to see you too. Hi. Oh, good. We can hear you. Any, any topics today you’re hoping we’ll grab, I’m gonna pull up, I, I typed into the chat, but I, so I’m at the high school here. Mm-hmm. Um, but I’m working with our middle school this year in.

Types, activities are age appropriate for them and mm-hmm. Kind, not, not too much all at once for the younger guys. Yeah, that’s perfect. Lemme see if I can get this to come up for us.

I think I did it loading. Yeah. So let’s talk about that. And I, and we also have early college, so we’ve got a full span for middle school all the way up. Right. And I think when we talk about middle, we can start as low as fifth grade by the way. Initially there are, and I have examples if you wanna see them.

I can certainly put some in the chat that go all the way down to kindergarten. Um, and, and up. So there. So when we [00:06:00] think about my cap and this idea of career and academic planning, of course we’re not talking about what jobs they’re gonna be when they grow up. We’re talking about the social emotional learning skills.

That they’re developing and how those social emotional learning skills not only build better classrooms, but really start setting them up for the world of work. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a more complex dynamic. That’s this new paradigm we’re talking about. So, um, lemme see if I’ve got, oh, there we go. Skip that.

Um, I think one of the cool things as a frame is thinking about future readiness rather than the word career. So future ready is, are they ready for the next year at school? Are they ready for five years from now? Are they going to enter high school with a plan? Are they going to enter post-secondary life with a plan?

Whether that’s going directly to work, whether that’s. Certification, if that’s a two year, four year, whatever it is, there’s a plan. Um, and so Future Ready is now this, we’re, we’re using Future Ready in a sense of purpose as the [00:07:00] primary terms rather than the word career. ’cause career kind of has a lot of baggage.

I. You know, for a lot of, in a lot of ways. So it could be baggage because, uh, we don’t, because we associate with career and technical education, we feel that’s too limiting. Career could be limited to four year colleges. That’s, as people go into the university, we don’t wanna be limited by that. And as well as there’s a certain amount, we, we talk about the world of work and occupations.

There’s a lot of important, exciting things that may not be associated with that word, um, career. So we’re kind of. Dropping it a bit. We’re also framing with this fourth industrial revolution. Have, has anyone heard about this? Any thumbs up? You can use the, the reactions. I think Kent, is the reactions working?

We can throw some thumbs up. Um. What the, what the fourth industrial revolution is doing is talking about human skills that we need. So think about the computer and technology taking over jobs. So there’s a lot of jobs we don’t need anymore. If the computer can do it well. [00:08:00] I remember when the accountant was like a huge job and now it’s a computerized job, right?

And, and now we’ve got free online systems that can do a lot of that accounting. So as we start to see technology taking away jobs, the question is, what are they not taking away? Well, they’re not taking away human skills. So, empathy, compassion. Lemme see we’ve got a list here. We’ve got. Um, oh, we can, we can get to what we call the social emotional learning skills, right?

That these are the skills to communicate effectively, to be able to get along with each other. Um, we know these skills are the same ones that, that are, that, that support mental health, right? The ability to give positive and get positive feedback as we’re moving forward in time. So, so this human skills area and thinking about that becomes really important.

Um, here’s a list here from, um, a colleague from Singapore. Crystal Limb does a nice job of putting together some fancy language around it. But this one, empathy and compassion keeps popping up in the literature as being one of the number one skills. [00:09:00] And think about how important that is during covid, right?

The ability to recognize we’re all going through trauma, we’re all going through difficulties and and supporting one another through it. It’s an important human skill, complex communication skills. The youth are gonna be graduating into a world of work where they’re working with people from all over the world.

So complex communication could be cultural understanding, it could be patience with different linguistic skills. It could be figuring out how they’re gonna project manage in a way that they can all communicate effectively. There’s just a whole bunch of things that go with with complex communication that’s really important.

Um, and then also this idea of being adaptable and resilient. I mean, this is something we hear about all the time, um, is, and I realize I spelled resiliency wrong. I’ve been doing this now for three years and I never noticed that I had misspelled that, that is a crack up. Um, but rate, um. Financial planning, we need them to make good, um, decisions about their world and future based on how much money I’m gonna make, how much debt I’m gonna get [00:10:00] into, um, trying to avoid debt.

Um, and then also personal branding and social capital. Something that I think we can start talking about even as early as middle school, right? They’re on social media. What are they projecting? Um, and then by the time we get to the 10th grade, I’m gonna be encouraging you all. Um, this is the new innovation to have all of our students, by the end of 10th grade, putting together a LinkedIn account, a professional portfolio, a.

That they can then use as a way of identifying who I am. But to do that, they need to be thinking about their brand. Um, those using Naviance, they ha you have the, um, what is it? The, the strengths finder? Is it the strengths finder? It’s the, it’s the whole Gallup poll. Um, looking at personality. We’ve got the ec or the, the hauling codes.

We have, uh, Myers-Briggs, we have other things we can use that basically says, who am I in this world of work? What are the contributions I bring? To an organization and helping you think about that, the kinda leadership qualities they have and how they express them, [00:11:00] um, in their interpersonal work is really powerful to start setting them up and thinking about their brand and how they’re, how they’re engaged.

But the LinkedIn then provides that professional facing portfolio, um, that can, can communicate all that. The key to the end of the day is all about teamwork, and this is what’s being asked for in the fourth industrial revolution. Can you work in teams? We’re doing this in our schools. They’re working on projects together.

You’re pairing them up, working in groups, so we’re getting there. The question is, can we start as, can we now, as the counselors and the career educators, can we help? The youth gain a sense of the talent they’re developing by working effectively in teams. So it’s not the grade on the project we’re focused on, it’s the leadership, it’s the technology skills, the organization planning.

What is it that they’re doing within these or within these activities that we know are transferrable to the world of work and helping them kind of get credit for that. I’ll pause there. Questions on that so far?[00:12:00]

Thoughts and questions. Use the chat. Come off mute,

Michelle. Does it sound okay? Alright, it’s good so far. All right. So human skills is the first bucket we want to focus on, and we want our youth to start identifying what kind of human skills they’re developing. I’ve got an activity I’ll show you in a little bit that can help do that, and it’s based on castle’s, social emotional learning.

So it’s nice, nice tight. There. But the other is technology skills, right? And technology skills are really important. We think about how they work with, you know, I was just talking with a person today who doesn’t like using, um, the, um, organizing things in Google, right? When we’ve got our, we’ve got our storage facility, we’ve got all this stuff going on.

Oh, I don’t like doing that. Well, how are we gonna communicate across teams if we don’t have a place? To put our work. So, so having, um, some of these different [00:13:00] technology strategies is really important for project management and engagement, and it’s a set of skills and data science that’s important. It’s a set of skills when we talk about the career clusters and what are the technologies that you need to learn that are gonna provide that added benefit, what we want our youth to do, even starting in middle school, is as they start looking at becoming future ready and they start seeing potential possibilities for themselves.

What are the technical skills they’re gonna need to pursue those possibilities? A lot of those technical skills are generalizable, right? So by learning how to do project management, you’re ready to be a teacher, you’re ready to be in a business, you’re ready to be doing all kinds of things. Being an entrepreneur, just having project management skills and their free certifications right now that they can go to do that, or learning how to do that is an an amazing set of skills that transfers widely.

Um, and so, and so, I think it’s helping them connect to the technology skills, um, as, as they go through. So [00:14:00] Kevin had a question about LinkedIn as a key tool. I think so. Um, Kevin, because you talked about, someone talked about early college, was that yours? Um, or John talked about early college programs.

What we wanna be focusing on is what, what are the certifications and training. That our youth need in high school before they finish high school. So starting in middle before they finish high school, that’s gonna make them employable, right? They can gra, they can leave high school right now and they can get a high paying job.

That’s what we want them to be thinking about. And the reason for that is because in Massachusetts, as you probably all know, about a third of our ninth graders are getting through post-secondary one third, so that means 66%. I have to have another option. ’cause they’re not gonna finish. So if we can do, if we can help them start seeing themselves as building talent and looking at what it is, what are the qualifications, [00:15:00] accomplishments they need while they’re in high school, to be able to say, here’s what I can do in the world.

I. Then we know we’ve set them up for success. And yes, most of them are gonna then move into the post-secondary. And I think actually by doing this first step, they’re gonna be better at the, at the post-secondary. ’cause they could, they know they’re accomplished. They have an identity that’s successful. So what’s happening with LinkedIn is Microsoft.

As well as Google have created online certifications that are free or low cost. Right now, the, the Microsoft, um, LinkedIn ones, um, are free until the end of December and the students can go in and adults, we can have our parents in there too, um, can go in, get these certifications. And then what they’re doing on LinkedIn is LinkedIn, at least for the, um, they’re telling me that for the Microsoft LinkedIn ones, it puts a badge up on the LinkedIn account and they have businesses already looking at the LinkedIn profiles, looking for people with those skills.

I. [00:16:00] Um, it’s even gone as far as IBM taking off academic background off of the job, um, requirements. They want to hear what you can do, what are the skills you have. And so lots of these businesses are now coming forward to saying, I’m not interested in your post-secondary degree. I’m interested in your post-secondary skills in effect.

Right. What’s the skills you’ve, you’ve got developed? And so the LinkedIn account from my standpoint, does two things. It’s, it immediately establishes that we’re helping them become professionals and we’re giving them a professional facing portfolio. It’s helping them now starting in the, in the rising 11th grade, to think about the additional skill sets, the jobs they’re gonna get, the work-based learning, the certifications.

They may go after the early college certification leading towards something so that at the end they know they need something tangible to showcase on that portfolio about the skills that they’re developing. So it, it is helping to build out that professional identity. And the third is. Once they have it, you can’t lose them.

Right now when you try to figure out where have our graduates gone, we go [00:17:00] on LinkedIn and we start to see the history. How are they developing, how are they moving towards, um, becoming this professional? So there, there are ways in which I think the LinkedIn serves us, um, in a lot of ways. Now, um, Boston Public Schools is interested in this, but they, they, they’ve decided legally they wanna have parent permission.

They feel that 10th grade is too young. I think we all know our kids are doing a lot of social media right now, and there’s nothing about LinkedIn that’s really that dangerous in any way, but definitely look at your district to decide what they might want to do. Um, I’m, I’m just a big fan of this down the road, and it’s not here yet.

Hopefully it’ll be here in a year. We may have an online system that will use artificial intelligence to analyze that LinkedIn account and their resume and help the youth really, really examine their skills and help them identify career pathways that align to those skills and the learning opportunities that we’re talking about, um, to continue pursuing those skills.

So we have some solution strategies that are on the [00:18:00] way. We just have to find a, um. We just have to find the funding to get it in place here in Massachusetts, but we’re, we’re getting the conversation started, so, so I’m I, like I said, I think the LinkedIn really does help. And Kevin, if you have any comments or thoughts on that, certainly come off mutant and let’s chat about it since I just gave a long lecture.

I think it was just that. Um, I, I don’t have a LinkedIn account and I, I sometimes get emails or I get notices from LinkedIn and, and some students that we’ve had in the past occasionally are there. Yeah. And I, I probably don’t look at ’em as often as I should have. And I guess maybe, maybe if we were in the, we’re in the business field and the education field, maybe we’d be looking more often or updating our information more often than we are.

Mm-hmm. So maybe that’s it. I just didn’t know if it was one of those things that might. If you get students started on it early. Yeah, it might, if it, if it phases out and it disappears and gets replaced by something else, then you’re kinda starting all over again. But you seem to [00:19:00] think it’s gonna be around for a while.

I think it’s gonna be around for a while. It’s done a, it’s done a nice job so far. And if there’s something new that replaces it because they know what this genre does, they’ll be more, it’ll be easier for them to then move to the next one. Sort of like. Once we learn how to use, um, a spreadsheet, you know, whether we use Excel or something else, we have a general idea of the concept of what we’re trying to do, and it makes it easier to learn.

It’s one thing. The other thing I wanna say is you have to think of LinkedIn also in two ways. Um, one is, it’s about, it’s like an adult. It’s like a professional facing Facebook. Now. I know though. I know there’s some industries where I was over on the med school campus and they were telling me, oh no, it’s just about finding jobs.

It’s like, no, it’s not. That’s how I advertise my workshops. That’s how I explain my latest publication. That’s how I share really important stuff in the DEI realm that’s going on that I want people to hear about and I send it out there, a newspaper article, things like that. It’s a, it’s a professional Facebook account.

So, [00:20:00] so from that perspective, it’s not, it’s, it’s very important because what we’re building is social capital. And so for our youth, especially our low income youth, youth of color, that have a limited social capital, they’re gonna start building through the connections they make a community of people who are gonna be then listening, seeing what’s happening, um, and reflecting and giving nice kudos and all this is great stuff as things happen.

So, so there’s no other way I can think of to help our youth build that social capital as quickly, um, and, and in a professional way as a LinkedIn account. Um, so, so yeah, I think there’s some tremendous value going on. And so Kevin, we’re gonna have to have a little, uh, you know, maybe Jen, we’re gonna have to have a, a LinkedIn, uh, PD session for our educators to help them all get their LinkedIn accounts going.

Um, but yeah, I think, I think it is, I, that’s just how I do it, Kevin. So when I sent something out, um, I link it to my Twitter account as well. And so my Twitter and my LinkedIn, um, send out to lots and lots of [00:21:00] people around the world. Um, my latest, um, session or something I’m doing, and it, it helps, it helps a lot.

So it’s good stuff. I’ll just pipe in here with a little LinkedIn. Fun fact that Mefa Pathway, actually one of our features in the Investigate your Future feature, um, links directly to LinkedIn, um, from that, from that feature. So just, uh. Yeah. Now I, I, I wanna slide ahead and I didn’t want to, lemme see if this will click it back.

There we go. Whoop, I did did it the wrong way still. I don’t know why it’s not letting me go backwards. It’s only goes one way. Try again. There we go. So, um, so if, if soft, if the human skills right, we’re not gonna use the word soft skills anymore. Um, when we think about human skills, we think about technology skills.

The other thing we need within, and this is why in even in fifth grade, we’re not talking about careers. It’s really about future management. It’s about thinking about how am I preparing for the future? So career [00:22:00] management skills is sort of the word that’s used, but it’s really. Future planning and, and helping you start doing this.

I, I, this is a really anxiety provoking photo, which I just lost again. Um, basically this is what it looks like in their future. There’s no pathway that’s clear. You know, even if we work with the 16 career clusters, it doesn’t tell us how to get anywhere. Uh, we have to then figure out the post-secondary pathways and those might lead to it, and the job and all.

It’s just. It’s craziness. So, um, so we really need to be helping you think about these different pathways. The solution strategy that I’m hoping to bring into Massachusetts will actually give them this. It will give them the different pathways that they can take from their skills and it will show them the different, um, learning opportunities for credentials for community college, four year, everything else that lines up, uh, with those clusters.

Right now we don’t have a solution doing this. So in our schools, we have to kind of help do that. So if we are doing career technical ed, we need to be thinking about helping them [00:23:00] see what a healthcare pathway looks like and their options that they have as they, as they start developing into those, um, and, and things like that.

So it’s, it’s a challenge, um, for us because we have to manufacture and build this up. But without that, it’s really hard to just get involved in a pathway or in a skillset or a particular area without seeing the future. So just wanna highlight that we still have some things to work on. Thoughts on that?

Anyone using on net?

Anyone? Michelle, you guys using on net? The on net system I.

It’s, I think you’re there. Oh, I’m trying to, it kept going on and off. Um, I’m aware of it. We haven’t been doing [00:24:00] activities with our kids lately. What I wanna do is just show you a really quick, um. A quick exercise that I think is really good for getting away from interest assessments, um, and, and really focusing more on their skills.

And then I have a, I have an actual full activity you can use that embeds this into it, but I just wanted to kind of demonstrate that, that, but anyone else, has anyone use the O Net system at all? Jody or Kevin? Laurie, John Whitney.

Let me see if I can get over to it.

So if you go in, it’s just, just type in o net, right? It’s O-N-E-T-O. Online, it just comes, it should just pop right up.

And then what I’m gonna have you do is just go into this advanced search, somewhat of a cumbersome [00:25:00] process. Michelle, which online system does your school use?

Did you say Naviance? Okay, so, so, um, Naviance is, Naviance steals everything from, doesn’t steal. They, they, they, they bring everything in from on net MEFA pathway brings information in from on net. So this is the universe set, most boring set in the world, right? This is why we think goodness for MEFA pathway, it’s much more engaging and exciting.

Um, but without, so, so they, they put the bells and whistles, but they, none of them have this exciting feature. So you see that skill search button, I’m pressing on. When you press on that and you have to go back up and press again. ’cause again, it’s not the most. It’s not the most easy thing to use, but you get these really cool things.

Now, I don’t know what the hell any of these mean. I, and I mean, I, you know, I mean, I read this and I go, I’m a counseling psychologist. Does active listening reflect what I do? Does this look like, anyway, a little more complicated. So we broke this down in a [00:26:00] lesson I’m gonna show you in a little bit that, um, that has it in everyday youth language.

But the idea is rather than focusing on what do you wanna be, rather than focusing on interest, let’s just focus on what can you do. And have them start clicking some buttons, and I want you to go ahead and do that. So I’m hoping you’re, you’re, you’re, I know you’re all, um, keeping yourself off camera, but I’m hoping you’re, you’re online.

I’m just gonna click in these first ones here, which are the basic skills, which a lot of our, our youth have right away, just even before we get started. You know, if they play Minecraft, they’ve got complex problem solving. Any of those video games they’re playing, right? They have complex problem solving skills.

Um, if they are playing Minecraft, they’re probably managing material resources, right? And if they’re in a gaming environment, big one, they’re probably managing personnel resources. Who’s doing what? Lot of stuff going on, right? Coordination, instruction, negotiating, persuading, social service orientation, social perceptiveness is a big one.

Lots of these skills our youth have already. What they don’t know is the relevance of these [00:27:00] skills to the world of work, and that’s what this does. When you press the go button at the bottom, it’s telling me that I have 500 occupations that match up with the basic skills that I put in. Now all we’re trying to do is to have our youth go, oh my gosh, I had no idea.

That’s the purpose of this. It’s to get them to realize that they have something to invest in. These are emerging skills. Now, of course, they’re still developing that. We know that, but we also know that they don’t know why these skills are important to their lives. Right? And now we can start to show them now the job zone, which is the five, this is the most advanced.

So they can scroll down if they want or they can stay there, which is great too. The, the fours are gonna be your, your lead, a bachelor’s degree. The threes are generally those you can get an early college degree or a two year college degree to get through, right? So, um, you’ve got, let’s see what I got here.

So this is where we’re matching with all 11. [00:28:00] Um, so a hydroelectric production manager, for example, right? And when they click on this, what they get is all the information about becoming a hydroelectric production manager. So again, same information that’s in MEFA, but MEFA does a better job of organizing it.

And so, so once they know they want, they, like hydroelectric production manager, I would switch ’em over to MEFA or Naviance or whatever you’re using to do the exploration, if that makes sense. But all the information is here, it’s just more boring, it’s more flat. Um, once they get good at it and they know what they’re looking for, this will be faster for them to, to do.

Um, so, so it’s kind of cool for them to be thinking about. Even starting in middle school, what are those future options? What are the courses and academic skills I need? What are the outside learning? Learning I need? Right? Certifications and other training. So when I’m entering high school, I have a clear understanding that in my junior year, here’s what I’m gonna do In my freshman year, here’s what I’m gonna do.

So there’s a full plan moving forward for how I’m going [00:29:00] to, um, be successful as I move forward into the future. Yes, they’re gonna change. What they aren’t changing is an understanding about how all this goes together. So what you see here on the outside is the 11 skills that match and then there’s 10 skills that match.

Um, and it just keeps going down, down the list. And again, the fours and the threes are probably where we’re gonna wanna focus them. The threes are really cool because again, they can start thinking about that right now. So we had a, um, a young woman who got excited about the health science pathway at her school and, and, and as a sophomore and as a junior, as she’s getting ready for her junior year, went to the college to take a, um, to get a certification as a dietician aide so she could start working in the hospitals, which she did.

Um, then she realized that if she wanted to continue working in health science, she had to take more math and science classes. So even though it’d be her freshman, sophomore year, she really wasn’t doing anything. Wasn’t activated at all. Her junior, senior year, she took all the advanced courses, plus 10 more credits of college and was able to get a full scholarship into a [00:30:00] nursing program.

Okay, so this idea that what we’re doing in the middle school is we’re helping build out that framework of how it works and the different things I need to be thinking and considering. And then as we start moving into the high school, and I think this comes back to, um, to John’s earlier question about early college, this becomes critical as a way of helping them see the, and, and really explore the pathways.

Um, towards their future. And I think by early college I’m also putting in their certifications. I’m thinking about not just early college, but what are the tangible skills you’ll have at the end of high school that, that business and industry says, wow, I’m willing to pay you to do certain kinds of jobs.

That that’s kind of what we’re looking at, whether that’s through early college or certifications. Um, we totally. I’m open for, look at that. Robotics technician doesn’t ro Anytime you have robot in the title, that’s gotta be great, right? Um, and they can start exploring and that robotics technician can lead towards other computer science degrees.

So this can become a, a mar, you know, the stepping [00:31:00] stones towards that. I. So I’m gonna pause there. Questions or thoughts about this kind of idea? So it’s, it’s a different strategy to get started because it’s based on self-exploration of their skills and then becoming aware of how those skills transfer across a wide range of opportunities.

That’s the process we’re looking at with the MIC app.

Now, if you’re gonna keep me talking like this, I’ve got like two or three more of these to do today. You have no idea what my Tuesday’s like. I’m gonna run out of voice after this first hour, so we’re gonna have to have some conversation here to mix it up a little bit. Where did my PowerPoint go? There it is.

Some thoughts or questions? We had a question. Come into the chat. Great. Um, is there any connection between this data and labor needs by county or [00:32:00] programs and two year colleges? Absolutely. So what you do then, uh, once we’re here, I’m gonna go to robotics ’cause that was so cool. Can I find robotics again?

Where to go? I lost my robotics. All right, let’s do diagnostic medical sonographer. ’cause that looks cool. So what happens is down at the bottom

you have your um, you have credentials. So you can go out and find where you can get the training for this, and that gets you right to your two year colleges or other certifications. You know what’s nice here is it shows that half of them have an associate’s degree or less. To be able to move into this career.

Um, and then when you come down to this at the bottom, you have employment trends. So you’re able to select into Massachusetts and it should give us also by county.

Let’s see. Yep. So you have, so it has some Barnstable, the Boston [00:33:00] area, Providence, Springfield, and it gives you a sense of where the, um, where the salary wages are as you go through. And I like clicking on hourly ’cause youth don’t understand what salary means at an annual. So give them the hourly and boy does that get them going.

When they see $42 an hour, they go, oh, you know, their, their eyes start spinning. And that’s kinda what we’re wanting. Um, for the bright outlook, um, I.

I’m trying to see. I think there is a way to get more detailed information from here. Um, but we are able to get, as I said, we are able to get information on, um, see if I got this. Let’s see about that. Lemme go back one more. Here we go. Uh, let’s see. Projected job openings. There we go. So now we can look here and we can see the trends in Massachusetts.

Um, I think in. Me a pathway. It’ll have the information by region within, um, within, within [00:34:00] the state. I know that’s available somewhere, but Do you have it on yours, Jen? No, not within, um, specific region. It goes by by state. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So that’s as close as we get. But what’s cool though, and I just wanna say, I mean it is awesome when we get them on this, and again, it will be easier to look for in the MEFA pathway ’cause it basically talks in different language about these.

But finding, um, training options in Massachusetts means we’re looking right away at the two year colleges and it’s showing us which ones have it. So it’s kind of cool. And it is just a matter of, of learning how to use this information. But as I said, once they have a career or something that looks exciting, some kind of occupation that they say, oh, I wanna learn more about, then what we wanna do is get back over to our online systems of whether using Naviance, Zello or or MEFA pathway, whatever you’re using the mass CIS.

And do the exploration there. ’cause that way you can save the occupation in your portfolio. You can’t save it here. I just had a, just had a very tearful, [00:35:00] um, conversation with a counselor whose school left from Massachusetts and left their online system and we’re trying to figure out how to save things in their O net.

And it’s like, no, you can’t. Which is why we don’t use own net for our portfolios. So, kinda a bummer. Um, let me come back to this other questions.

So we have, so this is a perfect example then of how MEFA Pathway looks so much more, um, inviting. It’s got detailed information on the different areas. It organizes it in a nicer way and pleasing, and that’s what the online systems are about. Um, and MEFA Pathways is kinda leading the way I think, in the quality of this right now.

Let’s see. And then, um. Same thing, looking at skills. So you’ve got the list here, which comes from own net. I don’t know if you’ve all changed to Jen where it gives us the list of careers yet. I know, I know. That was something [00:36:00] that we may have talked about for the future. Yes. No, we will be updating this list where students can edit so they can add, you know, add the skills and not that aren’t included on the list.

And then will it, will it connect up to the occupations then too and showcase? Um, well, the occupations, the details list does provide that, but I, I don’t think it’s going to connect. It will connect to that, to the resume builder though. Okay, good. Yeah. Good. All right, so this is brand new. You are the first, um, presentation outside of Boston to see this.

Um, and what we’ve done is, um, we’ve started to create some my cap lessons that it, we’ve been tested down to the middle school. Okay, so they’ve been tested in middle school and they go through high school. You can modify them. They’re all open access. You can look at ’em and say, oh, I can do it better than do it better.

Just let us know. ’cause we’d love to put a copy of it up for everyone else to get access to. We have some of them in Spanish as well. Um, so we have a, uh, we’ve been working [00:37:00] with socio Latina that’s been helping, uh, especially at the middle school level, but kind of breaking it into to Spanish. So you have a bilingual component as well.

Um, the, the drive itself, I. Um, has all of it here and the administrative guide, which is what we’ve just kind of tied everything together. So you’ve got one stop shopping, um,

you know, just kind of, we can go through the background and talks a little bit about it. We’ve also tried to. Show how the lessons align with castle’s, SEL work, as well as some culturally responsive practices. Uh, for those of you working with students with disabilities, we have it aligned with self-determination skills.

So we’ve done some things on that, but what I wanna do is show you this, who am I lesson, um, is one of the ones that we’re really excited about and it, and the reason we’re excited in part is because it uses, um, castles. SEL skills that employees are asking for. [00:38:00] So those human skills I talked about, it gives them a list.

So here’s a link here to the actual PowerPoint. Isn’t that cool? Just a couple clicks and there you go, right to the lesson. Now, these were originally designed during covid, so they were, they were done in a synchronous online format. We’ve now created conversation pieces in the administrative guide to do this in a classroom.

So you can still use the PowerPoint, but then you have classroom conversation pieces you can use. Um, so let me give you an idea then of what we’re looking at. So we’ve taken these skills that Castle identified from employers, organized them, not according to Castle’s framework. We organized them around, you know, kind of how, what builds a better classroom.

So how are you having a positive impact on the people you’re working with? How are, what communication skills do you have? How about listening? Are you dependable? Are you organized? And then what the students do is they just go through, whoop. And they identify these and bring them over. Now we have a Nearpod example for these two.

I’m not seeing it in this, but we are [00:39:00] looking at a Nearpod thing where they can also vote on them. But the idea is if I’m in a classroom environment, I’m probably going to use the whole sheet and have them circle these. But the idea is for them to decide what skills they have, what are the things I, I’m bringing to the table.

So, so they’re, they’re describing their narrative, if you will, their own personal narrative. Then, um, they do it for each of the areas, talking about them, of course. ’cause we want conversation with them about what these are like, how they’re helpful. Um, and now what’s cool is when it’s time for them to go develop their resume, this is taken from the Naviance piece.

All of those skills they just had, there become the qualifications section of their resume. And they’re written in language that business is looking for, so they don’t have to worry about the translation into that language. They’re getting it right there and it’s already kind of giving them as, and I like to do functional resumes, and that’s what we teach them through our lessons, is building up a functional resume that’s really showcasing who they are and what they have.[00:40:00]

Um, and then what, and so that happens in lesson two. They start building their, their resume up. But what they do in lesson three, which is also fun. Is they go back to own net and they do exactly what we just discussed, but this time they’re doing it now with these skills in mind. So they’ve reviewed the skills.

So when they go into the own net profile, what they’re gonna be looking at are clicking on the skill sets that they’ve identified from the list and then clicking on the occupation. So the advanced skill search is what they’re gonna be using. So it’s just a guided way of letting, um, one of the key themes that makes the My Cap different.

A different paradigm is that it’s student driven and the way we make it student driven is we give them voice and we give them power and this is how we’re doing it. We’re letting them decide what they wanna be looking at. So, um, so they go to the ADV advance and it’s got all the instructions then to go back to what you just did.

So kind of cool in there. Another, another, um, thing. We have those of you that are interested in the career [00:41:00] clusters. Um, we’ve, we basically created two lessons. One that uses the advanced CTE’s little checklist for clusters. So they go, they actually do it more as a conversation. They identify which clusters seem most interesting for themselves.

Uh, oops, I don’t need to do that. And then, um, and then in the second lesson, you can actually go to use the career cluster and that, you know, um. There’s an, there’s an interest tool that that looks at career clusters, so you can do that as well. But the first one is designed to just let them in their own voice, think about the clusters that they’re most interested in, and then O net lets them go and, um, and click on clusters as opposed to clicking on the skills, for example, so they can explore careers within those clusters.

So trying to find a way for youth driven, youth guided, um, and youth voice throughout this whole process. Any reactions or thoughts?

I really like these lesson plans. I think they’re awesome for, for [00:42:00] kids, particularly younger kids, trying to start the conversation about what their identity is. Um, exactly right. Are, are these available yet to, they’re right there. I just gave ’em to you. Yes, they’re free. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So let me, I’m sure I was looking online link.

Oh, oh, no, they’re not. No. See that’s the secret. You gotta come to this. Ah, okay. They’ll be, we’re getting them out. We’re getting them out. We just literally just got this live. Um, this last week, so, okay. Thank you. I’m gonna put it in the chat box. Okay. Thank you so much sitting here. Tea you the whole time.

Um, the last one I want to just highlight, I wanna highlight all, but we don’t have time to, but the last one I wanna highlight is the re sec. Now you’ve all done the interest profiler, which is the one I hate the most, by the way. How, how best to kill the whole engagement in career development than to have ’em take 180 items and then come out that.

Says, oh, you should be a mortician, right? My daughter’s still laughing at her best friend saying, Hey, you’re gonna be a mortician, because some interest assessment told [00:43:00] me I would be, I mean, this is, this is not the way we wanna do this. So we found this guy in San Diego. I didn’t find him. He’s really, he’s on all these TED Talks.

He’s really quite famous, but he is an administrator at San Diego and starting in the third grade, they basically have a narrative conversation about what the re set code is, what the Holland type is about. And the re set code is a realistic investigative artistic. Social, enterprising and conventional.

Um, and. And so we, we met with them to say, how do you do that? Right? How do you create this? And he showed us some videos and we’ve got ’em in the lesson that you can use. But basically, once the youth figure out what these types are and they start to reflect on which ones they believe they have, then they start organizing their conversations.

As they analyze books, they’re analyzing the characters according to their rea set code. And they’re finding all this spontaneous way of framing the world, um, using these types. Love that. What the interest profiler does is it skips all that it has. You take items that are aligned to [00:44:00] the Rea Set Code, but then just gives you an answer.

It skips over the self-exploration. Understanding of the value of what this type is all about. So that’s what we wanna do. And then we, we can go over to own that again, and we can just put in our rein set code that we believe we have and start exploring the world of work from there. So again, students in control, students guiding the process, um, before we go into any other formalized interest assessments.

And I’m fine with that. But Whitney, I’m totally glad you. You picked it up. It’s all about identity development. And we want youth developing their identity in some ways, on their own terms, not letting these outside assessment tools tell them who they are. Um, because they come back very, they’re, they’re just, they’re just not in depth and they often don’t reflect the, the character and the quality of what’s going on with our youth.

So we need to help them find their voice. Right. And I also find that kids are more engaged if they start the, the process themselves and figure it out on their own rather than somebody telling them, this is. You know, this is how you should feel. That’s right. That’s right. [00:45:00] And the optimizing your learning was done because, you know, we were all freaked out and still are about our youth being able to focus, given Covid and the trauma and all the chaos going on.

Thinking about how to support them in recognizing their challenge. I. Then thinking about ways they can take some control of it over it. Right? And so this optimizing your learning is all about them recognizing supports they might need, recognizing deep breathing, mindfulness, what are the strategies, trying them out, and then coming back and talking about what worked.

Making this a conversation as a group, not just an individual type thing. So it is a tier one strategy that’s trying to help us all recognize we’re all working on stuff, and as educators, when you can model it and engage in it as well, and practice and come back and share what you’re doing, then they realize that this is something we all do.

So, yes, starting this early, and this was done. My son was doing this in middle school, um, when I saw it being done and, and got permission to bring it up to, to the next level. Um, [00:46:00] and I’m just really excited about, um, about the impact. And it’s been a big hit nationally because I think it does hit on that, that SEL component around learning, but it’s also trying to help youth see they can take some control, whatever limited control they may have in their lives, they can still be thinking strategically about getting focused on school.

Let’s see. And then the last one is personal roadmap, which, you know, what I want them to be is thinking about how they’re gonna have a, a positive effect in the world. If they’re not angry right now, right then they’re not really breathing because there’s a lot to be angry about. Whether it’s global warming, whether it’s this disease that’s going through that’s sticking away my life, whatever the things are, it’s all out there.

And so what the personal roadmap does is gets them connected to the UN sustainable development goals. For them to see that there’s a whole international conversation going on these challenges and which one do you wanna jump into? And then helping them start setting some smart goals as they start to think about how they might do that.

Uh, and then starting to look at the different [00:47:00] courses and, and different career options that might be aligned to, to supporting that as well. So kinda that mission, that personal mission type of thing, using that as a way of thinking about their future planning. So I’m excited about that. And we have more to do.

We have lots more we’re gonna be adding in and we’re, we’re gonna make this. This is a community of practice. Now we’re, we’re basically looking for educators to say, I like it. Here’s one I wanna put in for this, and then we wanna look at it and, and start building out a bigger, um, universe of lessons that educators are, are doing out there.

So, so this is just our be this is our foundation that we’re using, but we want to get you all involved in this.

And I know Jonathan’s been talking the whole time and hasn’t let anyone get in edgewise and Gloria too. But if there are any other comments, I’m teasing. Of course. Any other comments from, uh, those of you on mute that wanna jump off and say something, ask a question,[00:48:00]

put something in the chat box.

Great. Thanks Kevin. Uhhuh. Is there any thought about engaging parents? Mm-hmm. I think about those, the proportion of students that you say aren’t gonna finish high school. Yeah. And I think about engaging parents in the world of work slash training, the two year colleges, the labor market, and. When I think, think about the My Cap and the ILP, I think there’s a place for parents, and I’m wondering if anybody’s looking at that.

Totally. Totally. And so in the lessons you’ll see a parent connections or family connections, um, section. So we’re giving ideas for how they can connect the family in as we go through each of these lessons. Um, and, and Jody, I would also say that our parents, not only do we need them to understand it for their students, they, many of our parents need it for themselves.

And so I would like to see a parallel process going on. Right. Students learn it in the [00:49:00] classroom, go home and do it with your parents. Right, right. Well if, Hmm, if the parents haven’t been able to achieve something for themselves, it’s hard for them to change their aspirations into realized expectations for their kids.

Their kids. Exactly. So what I, what I’m looking at, and that’s why I look at it from the skills platform. I think a lot of times parents don’t realize. The current skills they have have high transferability too. And so if we can help lead that and do that as a, as a webinar with our parents, or have our parents come in and have them bring their laptops or have laptops ready for ’em and have them walk through it, I think we can start to showcase some of that.

But you’re right, it is about helping them have higher aspirations. Um, I’m working with, um, I’m working with PBS kids and they’re, they’re starting to look at that at the. For three year olds on up to start thinking about how can we help parents who may not have had those experiences think, have different aspirations and ideas for their children.

So Jody, I, I totally agree with you. This is an area we need to be [00:50:00] really intervening and, and manufacturing differently as we intervene with our family. Thank you. Any other thoughts?

There was a question that came in. Oh, there you go. Um, you could explain, explain the difference between mass CIS, my cap. Yeah. I’ll begin with those s. Yeah. All the M Yeah. Thank you Kevin. And I think, I think when you putting that in, we have on net, we’ve talked about Naviance. Um. MEFA Pathway, um, Zello, we got all these different groups.

So, so the My Cap is a process for helping us engage students in identifying their talent, really investigating themselves and learning about their skills, learning about the transferability of those skills, so they start getting an expanded sense of potential and possibilities. And then coming up with the plans, you know, what are my post-secondary plans, my current academic plans, so they start seeing the [00:51:00] relevance of their learning opportunities.

That’s the process. To do this, we have to have online tools and know that’s the technology, right? The mass, CIS, the MEFA pathway. These are the technology tools that are needed to support the process. And what happens is, is we have a group activity going on where we have conversation exploration. You see the lessons for that.

Then it links into the online systems and there’s an e-portfolio that stores the artifacts as we’re engaging with them on those, whether it’s a resume or it’s a list of occupations I’m interested in or post-secondary things I mentioned. All that stuff gets stored in the portfolio, so, so when we think of my cap, it’s both.

It’s both the process as well as it’s linking to the technology. So we think of these technologies as the instrument, um, that’s needed, that’s necessary to make this work. And it’s necessary because no one in this room and there’s no one in the world who knows everything about all these occupations.

There’s so much detail, you know, even what post-secondary, which programs [00:52:00] nearby what all this stuff. So we’re really needing to help educate our youth. And our families and how to use these online systems. Well, what makes MEFA Pathway and the Mass CIS great is they’re free. So mass, CIS is, is through our mass hire, so all our families, parents, everyone has access to it.

MEFA Pathway is gonna be free to all of our students and families can connect into it as well. So, so that’s why we kind of, you know, I’m, I have no problem coming out here to support, I generally stay agnostic to all the business elements, but when they’re free access, I try to make sure we’re aware of that because I think it’s important, um, for, for just making sure we all, we can all get into these.

So it’s good stuff. Any other follow up thoughts, Kevin, on that?

All right. Yeah. And it’s, it’s one of the issues get everyone gives, oh, we’re doing MEFA pathway. It’s like, well, you are, but that’s the instrument. That’s not the scope and sequence of learning. And that’s the difference. What are the scope of learning objectives and what are the, what’s the [00:53:00] activities that we’re gonna use, um, to really help realize those, those objectives?

And that’s what we’re doing with the full my cap piece of it. It’s exciting now the one lessons you’re looking at, were done with Boston, so they’re gonna be Naviance heavy and own it, but you can certainly flip it into Mefa Pathway if, if you’re using Mefa Pathway or um, certainly the mass CIS. So you can easily flip in and out of those in time.

We’ll get those set up in that way. Takes time. Alright, so I have another session at the top of this hour, so, um, uh, good and a my cap curriculum guide on the homepage, which is great too. Um, that you all can look at. So I thank you. Thanks, Jen. Thank you so much, Scott. This has been amazing. Per usual. We appreciate your expertise and, um, we will follow up with, um, to everyone with a rec uh, copy of the recording along with, um, the link to the lesson plan page and, um, the PDP information.[00:54:00]

That’s so thank you. Thanks all for joining. Maybe maybe we’ll get in person one day. Wouldn’t that be nice? That would be nice. Alright, we’ll work on that. Alright everybody, take care. Have a great afternoon. Thanks so much. Alright, bye-Bye.