A Career Readiness School District Mini-Grant from the state funds a Career Readiness Program at Kutztown Area High School, helping students explore career paths and show them what skills they need in a 21st century workforce.
An extension of Kutztown High School’s internship program, the goal of the Career Readiness Program is “to build relationships with businesses, better understand what they’re looking for in employees, 21st century skills, and creating that network whether it’s through an internship or an apprenticeship or mentoring, interviews, many different ways that we do it. Just extensions of the school out into the business community,” said KHS Assistant Principal Ed Myers.
A group of nine students recently visited Cambridge-Lee Industries, Reading, which manufactures copper tubes, and met CEO Andrea Funk.
“It’s a historically male dominated sector run by a female CEO. She had a unique perspective on her position, what it means as far as gender and so forth. So not only leadership, not only the workforce and what they’re looking for, but her unique perspective in that role is very interesting,” said Myers.
Funk answered the students’ questions and talked to them about her background and experiences.
“How that industry works, some of the talents and skills you need as a leader, as a project team manager,” he said. “There’s many different facets to it and that’s what our students took away from that, all the different elements that are involved. Also how do you get there as a leader? How do you get to the top? What does that process look like? That experience allowed us to take away a lot of different things from different angles.”
The students that participated in the visit to Cambridge-Lee Industries have been participating in the KHS Leadership Collaborative for the past couple of years. Students were selected based on academics, school involvement and interests in future aspirations.
“Students who are not only interested in leadership but also business and just have demonstrated the academic acuity along with the interpersonal acuity to not only lend to the group but also take some time outside of school to be able to explore more beyond,” said Myers. “They’ve really gained knowledge of what business looks like, what leadership looks like, what 21st century skills are needed to succeed.”
Other places the group has visited include Customers Bank in Reading, learning about making split-second decisions and making good business decisions, Myers said.
“Decision making as a concept and how it goes into all these different sectors and different ways,” he said. “You use quantitative measures, you use qualitative measures, you use intuition and a lot of things go into it.”
What Myers hopes students take away from the experience is the opportunity to explore career paths.
“Think about how they’re going to fit into the wider world. What do they see themselves truly doing? They may decide that, yes, that is for them, or they may decide it’s not.”
Myers said the district is trying to get students to look at different career paths at a younger age.
“Our job is we feel when that student goes off to college that they have a sound understanding of that chosen major and really what it entails so they make informed decisions for what they do beyond high school,” said Myers.
Myers is looking at future businesses for students to visit to continue student exploration of future career paths.