GPS Education Partners and DuPage County Schools on Work-Based Learning

Hello, you’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I’m Nate MacLennan and I am so excited today to talk about work-based learning ecosystems. We are lucky to have on the call today members of this partnership with GPS Ed and DuPage County schools who put together a really amazing collaboration to help young people find great pathways towards family sustaining wages. Over the last six months we partnered here at Getting Smart, we partnered with GPS

Ed to write a white paper on work-based learning and really think about how work-based learning can be scaled to allow for work-based learning for every student and the role that intermediaries can play in allowing this scaling to happen. So today we have four guests that are with us. I’m going to have them each introduce themselves. Thank you all for being here. And the guests represent the intermediary, GPS Ed in this case, education, the sort of

schools part of it as well as the industry part of it when we think about the entire ecosystem. So let’s get right to it. And Dr. Rosetti and Jim and Jovan and Jeff, I’m going to just ask each one of you to introduce yourself and then as a prompting question to get us thinking about where your first job and what you learned from that job really briefly. So Dr. Rosetti if you can just introduce yourself and your position and organization and then

answer those questions. Thank you and thank you for allowing me to be on this time yesterday. Dr. Rosetti, I am the regional superintendent of schools for DuPage County so I’m different than a school district superintendent. I serve 42 school districts, 260 schools, 150,000 students and 12,000 educators. So my first pay job was a job at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. And I worked as an assistant, one of the part-time assistants to the curator there. And the most fun thing that

I want to share or the one thing that I learned is there’s so much more at the museum than what you see displayed. There’s like thousands of other items behind the scenes. Thanks. Thank you so much. And that’s an impressive number of schools and teachers and students just to let you know. So that’s a huge responsibility and thank you for your work there. Jim, take it away. Your introduction and first job. Sure. My name is Jim Campbell. I am a VP GM here at Prince Industries. We are a kind

of GPS ad. I have two of their students out of Lake Park High School who are, have gone through the program and are now starting to as full-time roles with us. We’re excited to have them on board. My first job was my own lawn mowing business when I was in high school. What I learned with that, if I wanted to make money, I had to hustle and have really good time management. And the more management I had and hustle I had, the more money I made. So hard work does pay off. Good

lessons for business for sure. Thanks, Jim. Yovan, take it away. Yes. Thanks for having me. Yovan Lazarevich. I am the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction at Lake Park High School out of Roselle, Illinois. I’m one of the schools that Dr. Roussetti oversees. We only have 2,600 kids, so I don’t have as many. But I feel like the work that we do does get pushed out through DuPage County. And we have an opportunity then to really impact the entire county and hopefully the

entire state and so forth. And as we continue to work on work-based learning. My first job was a bus boy. So I will echo what Jim said in terms of the hustle that’s necessary for it. But I would say paying attention to detail because I left my bin twice on seats where somebody’s sad in them. So I would say paying attention to detail was really key to that. So we’re starting to check off all those critical skills that employers are looking for and new employees. So I really appreciate it.

All right, Jeff, finish this up. Good afternoon. Jeff Ziegler calling from GPS Education Partners. GPS at super happy to be here among our partners. And want to share a quick little story about my background. I’m the partner development manager here at GPS. So I have the pleasure of bringing partners to the table to support work-based learning in DuPage among other communities that we work in. My first job was a utility clerk at a

local grocery store. And so I did everything from pushing the carts uphill in the snow in Wisconsin to stocking and realigning the front aisle. So one of the key skills that I picked up on was the value of customer service as well as the value of the customer experience in making those kind of first steps into a new environment welcoming and pleasurable and all that good stuff. So good life skills that take with me. Yeah, super appreciate that. And then

thinking about all these skills and I’ll quickly relay that my first pay job was my father asked my brother and I to pick Danie Lines and he paid us one cent per Danie Line and that business model was a complete failure because we made a lot of money and he kept reducing the price per Daniel or the wage per Danie Line until it was 15 Danie Lines per penny. So I learned a lot about business models and how to create a good business model that works. So it makes me think a lot is

that when we think about we have schools and then the larger collection of schools at the regional level and industry is how are we setting up young people to really thrive in the workplace once they graduate. And I think in a lot of times we’re missing that and the work that you all are doing is phenomenal and that the partnerships that exist and that are created that we’ll talk about are helping to bring together these pathways that give students the

skills that they need to when they graduate go out into the world and again make that family sustaining wage. So Dr. Rosetti I want to start with a big picture idea here of why is work-based learning so important now. Is there a new imperative? Is this just been growing or what are you seeing as the push and the urgency? Well I see it’s not right now that this has been going on but there’s more of an urgency right now. I want to say that I want to start with that there’s an urgency here

that I have seen but just to kind of go back I mean I’ve been the regional superintendent for 20 years and I’ve seen if I had a penny for every career fair that I went to I would have lots of money. I’ve seen great videos produced by manufacturers and other enterprises and industries sharing those with our school districts. I’ve seen lots of manuals and I’ve seen a lot of the what here’s what we need to do but I’ve not seen the how and I think that’s what’s really important when

you talk about the why now. It’s like why now is that like now the how to you know the rubber has to hit the road you know right now and I think that sense of urgency came about during COVID. I think that’s another piece of it we saw that more employers were looking for more employees so that happened and I think the other thing that happened is it’s part of why we’re even here today is GPS ID is that we found that intermediary and that was so important and I want to tell you why

it’s so important because in Lake Park and I want to give a lot of credit to Lake Park because they’ve been doing this work for a long time but it’s that in but how do you do that how do you scale it up with 42 school districts you know in Dupage County so how do you scale it up instead of every school district because it’s time consuming you know and you in here would say a lot of time a lot of resources you know what I mean on both sides both on the business side to get into a school and both

on the school side to you know to you know to get into a into a business so I think that’s so it’s so what GPS provided us really was like that how to and that intermediary approach and and what we took and what we decided to take into Dupage County was a regional approach as well and just to look at this not just from like one at a time you know one school district at a time or one high school at a time but to really look at it in a much broader approach what can we do

from a countywide from a regional approach another one of our partners is our College of Dupage our Community College and again they mirror the same territory that I cover they work with all of the you know school districts in Dupage so they became another partner and so this so this really I think the urgency I think having that intermediary was absolutely critical and then just one other quick thing I want to say and also having I think we’ve learned some things as educators

about relevancy you know what our curriculum we need to really think a little bit more about how do we tie a curriculum to the real world and I think we always knew the app but somehow again I think that relevancy issue came about so those pieces and again especially GPs speaking and I want to say this speaking the language of educators and the language of businesses I think was so key to making this happen and to continue to move us forward. I love that the

language of educators and industry and I’d even probably add on the language of community need you had this regional approach which which clearly was driven by by like what what needs to happen in the workforce so Jim I want to pivot to you you’re representing the workforce. Why work-based learning what what challenge did it solve for you all what were you facing and how is this potentially the solution for it in your opinion? What we’ve seen in the workforce is the tech

schools that used to exist when you and I were younger aren’t really as prevalent as they are back then so what GPs and has been for us as Dr. Sredi said they’re kind of like the gateway for us to link education system which you know five years ago was like you go to college today the the push to have kids go to college to be successful isn’t as prevalent as it was five years ago or even two years ago they’ve opened up the access for us to bring the next

generation of workforce into our facilities to where these young men and women can get a job in manufacturing doing things that you know were historically nasty dark and dirty where today’s manufacturing facilities are state-of-the-art we’re all world-class clean safe facilities to where these young men and women can develop a career doing something with their hands building something creating something and have that family living wage or they can sort of go into school and

grant them that forty thousand dollar a year loan they can start making that thirty thousand dollars a year day one and grow from there we have employees that have been with us for decades that are senior employees skilled set up men that are pushing six-figure incomes so what GPS has done has been that gateway for us to these school districts to show that these kids at Lake Park that are in their program have an avenue to go out and get a real-world job

earning real-world wages and have a career where they can have a family have vacations have all the stuff that you think of as the American dream right right yeah there’s something really interesting you said is there’s this pivot from from everybody goes to college and we know that that if a student has a degree it’s related to higher income but I think what we’re seeing is more and more viable pathways to a reasonable income that’s family sustaining and that college

isn’t the only pathway and that these that the whether it’s manufacturing or any of the other set market sectors there’s a lot of stem involved the this is a highly skilled and then and areas where they can advance within the industry and practice and challenge get challenged in all sorts of ways so I really like the idea that we’re seeing multiple pathways that rather than just a single pathway that may not work for every student and that honestly make just incur massive debt so

let’s go from a from Lake Park High School Yovan you’re in it day to day what does this look like and a really concise way for our listeners is like if a student is participating in this really amazing partnership what does it look like from the student perspective sure Nate so concise I don’t know about that but I can definitely give you the the kind of the so for from the education and from the school standpoint our goal is how do we

make it work for the students and obviously for industry and what GPS Ed does for us is there they’re the liaison right sometimes our partners aren’t always familiar on how to talk to a 17 or 18 year old right they’re used to employees and we’re actually coming for much more from that education perspective of we’re still trying to teach them right like I know I know Jim probably doesn’t like it too much but part of our idea here is to give them that opportunity to see what it

looks like and maybe say no to it right like no this isn’t what I’m in for but sometimes they’re like oh my gosh I can’t wait and Jim has two pretty good ones right now we’re pretty fortunate with him they love it you know they they dive in so I would say our day to day is we had to make it somehow attractive and make sure that there’s a way to still meet the needs that are requirements for the state and so what we did is we actually partnered with our cooperative work training

for our students so they can’t they go to a class earlier in the day where they’re able to we cover our consumer Ed so a lot of our financial literacy is done there so that’s part of their graduation requirement so we kind of check that box for them and then through there too we work on employability skills right so it’s not just they’re showing up I mean it’s are they on time what does a resume look like how do you talk to during an interview so we work on all of those during that time frame and

then at the end of the day we give them release time under cooperative work training where they have to go out and work for 15 to 20 hours during that week which is very easy to do when they’re working with our partners prints or others to get that time and again the reason we try to partner that at the end of the day is you know as Jim talked about earlier is that they have all of these kind of institutional knowledge people that are working during that time frame the retail time

at target from five until nine doesn’t really work for this type of industry we really need to get students there you know closer to one o’clock if we can so they can have that opportunity to work with those high knowledge people that are in that in manufacturing and actually work the machines and get a chance to kind of get hands on with with those a lot of times those the second shift for our partners there’s not you know they’d see there a skeleton crew or there’s not that many there so

our goal really in our some of our our obstacles is to be able to get those students out early enough so that they can actually have that experience and work that time so I know that Dr. Rossetti and her team her kind of assistants have worked on you know let’s not talk about you know the five-hour time frame before seats things like that like how do we how do we really get our students to get what they need which is to be out there and hands on and and really have that relevancy

for them so our day-to-day is is is basically that it’s not just about you know sending them out to work it’s it’s the accountability factors it’s the employability factors and then GPS add there that great liaison for our students you know giving them the real story right like hey you’re going to be drug tested you’re going to have to interview while you’re going to have to do these type of things and our kids have to recognize that so we as the educational partners have to

make sure that our kids are ready for that yeah thanks that makes sense and and I just want to point out that both you and Dr. Rossetti mentioned the word relevance and I love that we’re thinking more and more about rather than having students go to a school that’s not relevant for 13 years and then going out and suddenly becoming relevant is how do we increase crease relevance earlier on and we’re seeing this in project-based learning in K-12 real-world learning work-based learning

it’s happening more and more and I think we’re getting to this point where literacy skills math skills all those things are important and we need to give them real-world learning experiences and work-based learning does indeed do that. Can I add one I just like to add one thing and I think Jim alluded to this and Yvonne as well I think that there’s we talk a lot in Illinois about equity and I think that there’s a I think that there’s a strong equity component you know

to this as well is this is available to all students like we have a we owe a grant and our we owe a grant is restricted and and gratefully so to you know certain you know socioeconomic status but if you’re on that borderline sometimes you don’t have access to you don’t have so this is another so I think I think that that’s another very important part of all of this when you talk about when we talk about you know helping you know our students you know move forward as great

citizens as great you know what I mean and employ you know employees and and having a great future as well. Yeah I really appreciate you bringing that up is one of the things that we when we wrote this white paper with GPS said is that we really preach this idea that work-based learning should be for everyone and we actually took a thesis one step further and said everybody should have sort of this mandatory experience because because some students graduate and they don’t have any

work-based learning experience so I appreciate the access for equity and making sure everybody has this opportunity to develop these skills that we know are critical. Okay GPS said has been hiked throughout this conversation so far so Jeff you get to bring it together for us is is what’s the role you play and and how are you wrangling this very large ecosystem in order to make some sort of coherent pathway for young people and it’s helpful for businesses and schools in the community.

Yeah no thanks Nate it’s a great question you know as a as an intermediary our role is to to really understand you know the unique needs of the community our partners students educators from both private public secondary post-secondary industry partners industry associations understanding their needs as well as community-based organizations economic drivers of the region and how those play into the the ecosystem of this regional initiative and provide

those those opportunities to connect to work-based learning in balance and you know part of our role is to really identify those needs and service those needs for each of those individual constituents to create these on-ramps for students by doing so and thinking about all those factors we are really helping provide you know that diversity access and equity for all students and allowing students to kind of choose the path that’s right for them with the support of a community that’s

really engaged in this work and so we’ve heard a number of the terms around intermediary and the liaison you know we’re also a connector in doing these and helping people translate those needs to these other systems so that we’re all doing it in unison around a shared vision and so it’s a great responsibility it’s a it’s a it’s a great deal of work but it’s also it just makes a tremendous amount of sense you know when we just lay things out for each of our partners and really listen to

what they’re looking for and help them get there right right right I love the idea that there’s multiple pathways and trying to help help put this ecosystem together to see the different options when you think about one school trying to design with one industry partner or two industry partners but then replicating that 200 times there’s a lot of redundancy in the work and so trying to to reduce the friction is a role that I see intermediaries play yeah and just to just to add

on to that Nate I think one of the things that you know you know collectively you know we’re really about you know looking at systems and looking at scale and part of the work that that we do is working with each of the school partners you know under you know the regional office of education Dr. Rossetti’s office working with individual schools to find out where they’re at in the system to support work-based learning and then certainly working with our partners

like Jim and Prince Industries understand how they can best support this work and so it’s really about you know like I said understanding you know individual organization and system needs and helping them kind of get to those levels and provide the resources and supports the to help them to do it. Yeah I appreciate that add on there. Jim I want to come back to you and think about we’ve talked about a little bit about the school perspective on this I we’re all reading in the

sort of industry in the US we’re seeing a lot of open positions we’re seeing skills gap so both those things are happening I’m wondering are you seeing that in your Prince Industries I guess are you seeing that in your sector are you seeing that and you see work-based learning as is this a way if it was scaled that could really streamline this so that there be you get well trained staff that would come on board you wouldn’t have to untrain and then retrain up skill etc is this a

real problem for you all in in the sector and do you see this as a solution? This is a definite problem in their in their industry the skills gap is real and it’s ever expanding our workforce is getting older and older all the time and the new kids coming on board aren’t at the level of volume we need them to be at historically we’ve always asked or looked for people with experience what this program has done of GPS that has done for us has helped us change our mindset where we’re looking

for for students that have the ability and drive who want to work who want to show up on time who want to give 110% and now it’s our job as industry leaders to teach them how to do the job that they would be doing teach them the latest in CNC machining technology the latest in in people and processes that that we have to give them a career it helps the student figure out do I really want to do this for a living? The kind of try try manufacturing on try our industry on but also

puts a lot more work and emphasis on us as an industry to be also educators to a point where we have to teach them the pinpoint skills of how to be a machinist how to be an operator how to be a setup guy as they grow and progress through their their career historically we want people that we just plug and play and go I think those days for us are long gone it’s now ever more important for us for true workforce development to put together a program working with the

education system with the schools and getting these young young people and giving them the opportunity to showcase their desires and their drive and give them the tools to be successful in life. Right that makes total sense and I appreciate that focus on the the young person and there’s the added benefit of that you’re getting highly capable and skilled employees coming in which is helpful for the business I’m sure at Prince Industries so trying to figure that out. Yeah Jeff do you want

to add something on that? Yeah I’d love to support that and I think you know Jim thank you for bringing that up and in our work with with our partners it’s really about kind of opening our partner’s eyes translating what these experiences might be for for students not only did Jim mention hey students need an opportunity but he also understood you know from a business partner’s perspective that students do need the opportunity to validate those sort of skills within the

environment and it’s a shared responsibility and I think some of that’s that translation work as an intermediary is helpful in businesses and helping them recognize that they’ve got to make investments in young people to develop their their future talent and they’ve got a shared community responsibility to do that in partners like Prince in others across two pages that are involved in this ecosystem are like-minded folks and part of that is really convincing them to open up their

doors their hearts and minds to these sort of experiences and you know when when these things work in balance around that shared vision then magical things certainly happen for students and all of our partners in the work. Yeah that that translation really matters right is that school doesn’t often speak industry industry doesn’t often speak school or education and so having someone to play that translator and bring the players together in interesting ways to help

benefit both industry and young people who are working in it is critical. Dr. Rosetti I’m gonna go back to you you have incredible longevity in the system 20 years you’ve talked a little bit about history if if you could imagine sort of the your the most fulfilled dream for this system you’ve seen it as creation point and it’s starting to grow what why would you see it it could go like what’s the power in it and what’s your vision for to make this thing really scale. Definitely

sustainability we’d like to see this move forward you know to help sustain it. I if you want to in I think Jim said this and I think this is really important and if I really want this to move forward in a way that’s going to meet the needs of all of our students I’d love to see both business industry sitting alongside our educators developing curriculum together and not just developing curriculum together but perhaps even assessing the work together you know so that it’s a you know

so that this is a this is truly a union a joint effort I mean because there’s a and I mentioned the sense of urgency there’s a lot of stake here I mean I think better our better our businesses get the better our country becomes the better our students get you know this is all you know kind of an alignment piece here so I think that’s really important I think that’s probably one of the biggest things as well the sustainability the scaling it up across the state I think too I’d

love to see this in our colleges and universities when our teacher you know institutions I think that’s important too that they’re exposed to you know I mean the relevancy piece the work-based learning how this integrates into the work that we do every single day and again this shouldn’t be just starting at the high school level this is middle school this is even earlier on you know how do we continue to build towards so that it is recognized as this is part of our work

to create these great citizens you know for our nation uh yeah I appreciate that you’re putting great citizens for our nation as part of your big vision that’s so critical right is is businesses that are thriving people that are working in them that have family sustaining wages and can live the lives that they want to live and also contribute back to the communities within which they live and all these pieces play a role there so so let’s go back to the the school perspective again so

so uh yovan when we think about Lake Park High School talk a little bit about do you are you planning on growing the program what are the barriers to growth you see that this could be that more students could be exposed to work-based learning uh tell me talk a little bit about the future well I mean we would always love to see more students obviously at least get that opportunity for us so um we’re we’re constantly trying to promote program we have courses we have our

machining courses our manufacturing courses we have advanced manufacturing within our building you know Dr. Sade talked about college or dupe age our students can earn dual credit for those courses so there’s that incentive for them to continue and keep learning as you go forward so yeah we’d love to continue to to build off the work-based learning currently obviously under manufacturing I know that uh this this year we worked with GPS at and we’re gonna look at

information technology pathway uh for students so a different path obviously for students which by the way is also can be done in in manufacturing uh partners because they have it as well I mean it’s not something that’s just um you know um for one area um yeah I plan on continuously uh hitting up GPS you know add for the next one would be uh you know something in health services um you know I think we’re we definitely want to continue to scale this and I think we’re very fortunate to have

the dupe age ROE because they’re kind of the front runners on a lot of these and and want to scale this and make it sustainable for for everybody in in dupe age county so I think when you look at the support we have kind of uh from above with our with ROE and then our families and our staff that are constantly building to this we we definitely want to continue to look at ways to do this you asked about barriers and I think that the barriers are are the the previous perceptions

of what manufacturing looks like right like I think that’s a big piece for for a lot of our students once we actually get them into the buildings and they go oh my goodness like I I’m wearing a polo and jeans to work every day and I get to work on this cool machine that’s making you know um SpaceX parts like you know they’re they’re losing you know or I get to you know of a breathing valve for first responders right like I think they go wow that’s pretty cool you

know so they they see kind of the value to that uh so I think that’s a that’s a big barrier is to kind of get past what manufacturing used to be and look like um and then you know I I think Dr. Setti understands and Jeff has learned our our community a little bit better uh you know many of our parents are you know my kids going to U of I right like that’s we you know and and that’s we and I say this respectfully right like your kids going to go to U of I with a huge endowment maybe

but like let’s look at really the real the reality of what is going to occur here is that we need to make them so that they can have a you know provide for family you know as Dr. Setti said be good citizens uh you know be part of the workforce that is is going to continue to uh to make us great so those are some of our barriers I think we we’re trying you know every every communication that we have from the school we always include the parents on it we include the parents on on how

do we on what does this look like we give them testimonials from our students and and uh what those great things so uh yeah we want to continue to scale this up and keep looking at success for students and Nate can I briefly mention one barrier that I think is really important and this really is in um I went to know this first of all of all of everyone to know this one of the big barriers that I see is is time in our state keeps adding on more and more to our curriculum more and more

things to be taught and it doesn’t allow them for their student to take that class sometimes and I think that that is something so if I get this podcast and when I get it I’m sending it to every one of our legislators in the state of Illinois just so they kind of think about it because it is I really do think I don’t know if you’d agree with me on that divine but it’s part of the problem I think it’s part of a big obstacle that we’re going to have to address sooner or later

because kids need the time to take these classes and score that’s a that’s a great point yeah that’s a great point I mean we we’re just this past year we’re adding like four more mandates that have to be taught within the curriculum so so we have to find time for that and so yeah it really is like five pounds of stuff in a two pound bag that we’re trying to stuff in here to make sure that we can not we can get them everything that they need and we understand why we’re trying to create these

renaissance students but um but yeah it is I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Setti time is a huge factor right and we and we see that we work across the education sector and it is the number one issue right is that you there’s all sorts of innovative things people can do to help young people to help the world to help the country and if we try to do everything for every person it’s not going to work and so that that commodity is critical all right I want to wrap we could probably talk for

hours and hours because we have so much experience in the room um eat for each one of you I’ll prompt each of you and uh uh the most important piece of advice you would have for other regions thinking about scaling and the second piece if you would like is there is there someone that you would like to amplify or elevate just say their their name and and the the role they have or the organization they’re in so uh let’s start Dr. Setti you’ll lead us off here so um recommendation and anybody you

like to amplify so key advice um get it find a connector find a dpsn they’re great I think that take a regional approach to this and just do it I think don’t hesitate just do it and then the I would like to really give a big shout out to Tom Wendorf Tom has been in Dupage County as a manufacturer now retired for many years he and I have been we go back lots of stories that we have and I really have to give a shout out to him because he is the the gentleman who connected me to gps that

to help to make all this happen so shout out to Tom all right thank you so much and appreciate Tom if you’re listening all your efforts there Jim what do you have for us I think the biggest thing is for industry to be open-minded about this and be ready to teach um it’s not the status school we have to change the way we’re thinking to embrace these programs um because they work it opens up avenues for for young men and women to have a career and come in with little

applications knowledge that’s our job to teach that these educators are doing great job to giving us students that want to learn no-shot math know how to communicate now it’s our responsibility as the workforce to teach these young men and women and how to do certain specific job skills um I’m going to give a big shout out to Dr. Roussetti I’ve seen a huge shift on the education side and the acceptance of these programs and pushing that this work-based

learning is a viable career in a different pathway for these young men and women um without her their guidance and embracing of this program I don’t think we’d have it here in DuPage County yeah I appreciate that that regional work and the and the the champion at the regional level matters and Dr. Roussetti you’re certainly um serving that all right Yovan what do you have for us sure I would say um for us it’s having a strong CTE program the critical education having that

strong program and then having that kind of kid magnet that’s in there that can attract those students to to constantly be with them I think that’s uh you know we’re very fortunate we have Matt Sullivan he’s you know he’s constantly working with the students and has different pathways so I think um having that that strong CTE and and having a commitment to that is big um I think the inspiration uh Jim Roberts who actually started this at Lake Park and he’s now at the ROE does

work with them I think he’s a huge shout out because he kind of saw this early on he was an early adopter and and really got it going for us so um I would say Jim Roberts is and continues to be I can still email about stuff hey Jim how do I do this so he’s huge um and I don’t know if you notice Nate but I got two for one on that inspiration piece just so you saw that I got Matt and Jim so yeah all right Jeff finish this off and then I’ll give some closing remarks to to complete the cycle

here yeah no I happen to do it again thanks for having us um I think the you know I’ll drop in three little kind of key nuggets for you one uh taking a community-based approach to do this at scale across a region vitally important uh the way you do that is around a shared vision um among its stakeholders um from the workforce side education um that alignment is critical um and that that trailblazing innovation you know spirit is something that cannot be denied

uh folks like Tom and Jim Roberts uh were mentioned Dr. Rossetti heard leadership vital in doing that the second thing I would uh you know advise people to do is uh identify those resources that are needed and Intermediate Area could certainly do that programs exist in communities get involved in those we do things like provide program planning pathway mapping student recruitment partner mentor training for for our business partners looking at sustainable funding strategies so we

can scale and grow over time those are all things that kind of keep the program going so leveraging that expertise and those resources in your community are important and then last I would just say everyone has a role to play uh in this work and so getting you know complete ecosystems involved from chambers economic development groups secondary post-secondary registered apprenticeship uh you know industry association training programs creating on ramps

and off ramps for students to engage in this work is part of that ecosystem that makes it vital and it allows students to kind of you know uh you know create their own journey that’s supported locally within their community and so those partnerships are vital in doing that and bring more people to the table everyone can play a role and I think too just real quick awful what you just said Jeff it’s relationships relationships relationships relationships

with our students with our communities with our businesses with educators and I think that’s kind of a big learning we took advantage of our relationships I really there’s so many good nuggets in the your all of your responses I think I can so as a summary and try to bring it all together to close us off here is that we have a real challenge in this world in terms of skill a skills gap in terms of not enough young people having and being able to earn a family sustaining wage

work-based learning can solve that challenge and work-based learning is complex and having an intermediary and a regional approach can really help scale the impact of these programs and so really appreciative of all of your perspectives and and I think there’s a there’s a ton of resources out there um Jeff if you could what’s the website that people can go to if they want to learn more because all this information is on your website I think yeah our website is gpsed.org we’ve got a

number of resources about how we do you can certainly follow us on our social media channels and one other shout out to some of the other large players that are part of this momentum and this movement JFF jobs for the future obviously does a great job we’re a big proponent of you know the partnership for advancement of youth apprenticeship PIA in delivering quality work-based learning programming and solutions so great yeah there’s a lot of people working on this

in the in the the ecosystem right now and I really appreciate it I’m hopeful this podcast will bring even more players together thank you all for your time this afternoon I really appreciate the work you’re doing to help both the the nation and young people find incredible adult lives and carry on and and we appreciate all that you’ve contributed today still sent thanks everybody thanks for tuning into the Getting Smart podcast today we want this podcast to be actionable

insightful and a great way to learn about what’s next in learning in order to stay on the cutting edge we need people in the field to tell us what they’re hearing what they’re wanting and what they’re needing to learn more about got a topic or a guest in mind send your recommendations to me mason at gettingsmart.com and if you like what you’re hearing don’t forget to leave a review in Apple Podcasts or subscribe wherever you listen feel free to share the podcast on social media

using the hashtag GS Podcasts thanks so much