At its core, high school has always been about the future. A haze of possibility meets a dose of teenage trepidation: What will students do with their lives when senior year is over? What paths will they choose?
Now more than ever, school districts in Southwestern Pennsylvania are incorporating tomorrow’s hopes into today’s curriculum, offering students a range of opportunities to move their lives forward — everything from hands-on internships to classes focusing on skills they’ll need for success beyond the classroom.
No one knows what the future holds. But schools can help students prepare. And at South Allegheny, Northgate, and Elizabeth Forward school districts, educators are finding increasingly innovative ways to make that happen.
For example, Allegheny Health Network partners with Northgate School District, creating a place where students forge relevant and rewarding futures where teens build valuable skills through internships — earning school credit in the process. Students help with everything from crunching numbers to working with robotics technology. Some do internships with food businesses connected to Catapult Kitchen, an umbrella organization for startup food-service providers. Inglis, a company that retrofits homes for differently abled adults, has taken on student interns to help with everything from adaptive gaming to retrofitting kitchen utensils to marketing.
At South Allegheny, career-building opportunities are threaded throughout the student experience as they gain first-hand exploration of trade unions, hydroponics, aviation, sports media production, healthcare, cybersecurity, and much more. “At graduation, when it’s a happy time and we’re celebrating the students, the conversation naturally comes up: ‘What’s next? What are you doing?’” says Laura Thomson, the workforce coordinator at South Allegheny School District.
“So when they are ready, maybe not until they’re 24 or 25, then they have it to go back to. They know: ‘I’ve been to the carpenters union hall. I know where it is. I know how to apply. I felt good there. I can see myself there.’ We’re very fortunate to have had many students accepted to an apprenticeship with a trade union right at graduation. These kids are my neighbors, and to put them in jobs when they’re 18 that put them squarely in the upper middle class is a great feeling,” Thomson says. “They say about half of Americans are working in low-wage jobs. We want jobs for our kids that are more career-based — jobs that let them support themselves and support a family.”
And she doesn’t wait until high school to begin these conversations. Thomson visits middle school classrooms and even talks with elementary schoolers about careers.
Thomson isn’t alone in starting career conversations with elementary schoolers.
This year, all of the school buildings at Elizabeth Forward — three elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school — each have “future-ready” themes to get kids thinking about what’s ahead. Each building is styled as a laboratory school that leans into its own theme. In the high school, for example, they’re focusing on artificial intelligence. From teacher training to student programs, every activity is suffused with the theme. It’s specific, focused, and grounded in emerging technology.
Educators cannot know what kinds of careers the students of today will one day pursue. Planning for the future can be intimidating. But to look at the future-ready approach of these school districts is to realize: Kids are in good hands and, more than ever, they are being prepared — and inspired — for whatever the future brings.
South Allegheny, Northgate and Elizabeth Forward are each part of Future-Driven Schools, a regional alliance of school districts working to prepare every learner for tomorrow with support from The Grable Foundation. Grable has offered support to advance numerous initiatives within each of these schools with Tugboat and Little Bets grants designed to catalyze educators to see themselves as thinkers, designers, and creators and use grant funding to innovate and collaborate in ways that benefit their students and communities - one “little bet” at a time.
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