An engaging and enlightening presentation was given last Thursday night at the Warren Cultural Center about giving students in today’s world all the tools they need to be relevant pieces to today and tomorrow’s workforce.
Staff from Green Hills Area Education Agency (AEA) and others presented on a program called Future Ready Iowa. It is a workforce initiative designed to take tomorrow’s workforce to the next level through a robust and varied educational experience right now.
Jason Plourde, an administrator at Green Hills AEA, explained how AEAs work.
The vision for Future Ready Iowa, Green Hills’ Jason Plourde explained, is that the program will prepare individuals for dynamic careers and lifelong learning, meet employers’ needs, grow family incomes and strengthen communities.
Gaps
“There are measuring sticks we’re using to see if our young people are following through on their plans. We ask them, typically as seniors, if they have a plan for after they graduate,” Plourde said. “Many of us as parents, grandparents and community members ask that, and that’s one thing that we can do to help as adults is to start that conversation earlier than later.”
Plourde explained that everybody seems to be blaming everybody else for gaps there are in the workforce today.
Future Ready Iowa is gearing toward getting all Iowans on the same page so that instead of many people being little parts of the problem, many people can come together to be a big solution to the problem.
“There’s a gap between the jobs that are available and the young people who want to do those jobs. Low skill jobs, we have plenty of young people that will do those jobs, but those aren’t really the jobs we’d want for ourselves and those we love,” Plourde said.
Plourde explained that there is also such a thing as a middle skill job. These jobs oftentimes require more than a high school diploma and they pay a good wage. They may not, however, require a four-year degree. Some of these jobs require a two-year degree or even a certification. Many of these jobs pay in the neighborhood of $30,000 to $60,000.
Research the AEA has done shows that by 2025, 68% of Iowa jobs will require training and education beyond high school. Currently 57% of Iowans in the workforce have that level of education or training.
“Iowa is number one in high school graduation rate. Some people see that as a negative and say that somehow that if we’ve got graduates who aren’t ready [for the real world] than we’ve somehow lowered our standards. I would say there’s maybe some examples of that, but I haven’t seen a lowering of standards,” explained Plourde, who is a former classroom teacher. “There’s a little bit of a mismatch sometimes between the skills that we’re teaching them and what’s needed, I think that’s a reality, but I don’t think there’s any suggestion in our communities that we’ve lowered our standards.”
Connections
There are many ways that Future Ready Iowa is trying to connect Iowans with opportunities to obtain training and education.
One of the ways the CAM Community School District is trying to connect its students with specific training that correlates to the real world is through the CAM Digital Network. Shelly Miller, the group’s facilitator, spoke to the FRI crowd, as did a few of her students.
A key component of Future Ready Iowa is connecting students to opportunities with local businesses. For CAM, that connection has come with KJAN Radio in Atlantic. Jim Field, General Manager and part owner of the radio station, has given his time and knowledge to helping CAM’s students learn how to broadcast football games live via the station’s website.
The CAM Digital Network was paid for in part by a $25,000 STEM Best Grant they received.
Miller explained that as a longtime business teacher, she’s used to teaching classes where everything “adds up” and comes together in a perfect box with a bow on top, but teaching her CDN class, Miller has learned that education doesn’t always look that way, and she’s learning that it’s OK when that happens.
“This is future ready if I ever saw it,” Miller quipped. “It’s empowering students to take charge of their education.”
Students from CAM continued by showing replay clips they had produced, explained how everyone in the class has a particular role with the CAM Digital Network, and how they’ve developed a big following in their community because of their high-quality broadcasts. They have a drone, and while they’re not allowed to fly it over crowds at games, they expect that someday it may create more opportunities for helping local businesses.
At home
Nodaway Valley’s School Board held its monthly meeting prior to the FRI event in the Green Room at the Warren Cultural Center. School Board members attended the FRI presentation as did Paul Croghan, who is shared superintendent of CAM and NV.
Croghan explained in a phone interview Friday morning that NV is already taking steps in the direction of the Future Ready Iowa model in its way of educating students right here at home in Adair County. A few examples of this is the multimedia class that is taught by Jane Woodside and produces NVTV. Another would be the Work Experience Class that Karen Schulteis teaches where students are allowed to work in a business in our community during the school day to gain on-the-job experience.
That being said, Thursday’s conversation was just the tip of the iceberg to what could be accomplished when a community comes together to educate its children, Croghan explained.
“It’s exciting that we’re having conversations about how we can change education to help kids in their future. We’re working closely with the community and businesses, looking at their needs and trying to match a shortage in the workforce to be able to get a connection built there,” he said. “With our facility assessment we’re going through, I think we can not only look at current education but future education and programming. We can do some things to our facilities that will support that.”
Test scores are a major way educators measure the success of their students, and for good reason, however Croghan said they’re just a part of the picture. Croghan categorized NV’s test scores, as a whole, as “pretty good” but the goal, he acknowledges, is always for them to improve.
“My goals are proficiency with an Iowa assessment. You’ve gotta have some sort of a standard and some of them are concrete — some of them are formative and some of them are summative,” Croghan said. “My point in that is that you’re going to see cross curricular areas. That will improve our students’ ability to learn their math, their English, their science and their social studies. You’re going to have to know the history, how things operated before and how you’re trying to move forward. It’s not going to be the War of 1812 or the French Revolution, but they’re going to have to understand conflict and things like that. You have to understand that because these things are going to lead to areas bigger than just our immediate area. They’re going to get into [a global scale]. You can land an $80,000 job running a drone and the opportunities are endless in how we’re doing things.”