Career readiness program for youths, upcoming 'Manufacturing Ready' class for adults discussed at commission meeting

Highland County commissioners David Daniels, Brad Roades and Terry Britton were briefed on two new career readiness opportunities — one for middle and high school students, plus one for adults seeking employment in the manufacturing sector — during their Wednesday, Nov. 20 meeting.

Derek Ames, REACH for Tomorrow youth coordinator, introduced Nate Chrisman, founder of GOODLIFE, a program “designed for middle and high school students” teaching “prevention, leadership and resilience,” according to their website (iwantgood.org).

“GOODLIFE comes alongside your school’s parents, administrators, teachers, coaches and volunteers to empower youth with the mindsets and skills needed to navigate their responses to life circumstances, overcome obstacles, build healthy relationships and handle conflict with others, make constructive decisions, and set and achieve goals that impact the world in a meaningful way,” the website says. “We deliver these life skills using evidence-based, research-proven tools that create opportunities for new ways of thinking that lead to better outcomes for students and improved student culture.”

Ames said that the University of Cincinnati is providing grant funding to implement the GOODLIFE program in Highland County schools.

“They see the need for Highland County, so they're going to pay for all the materials and use that as prevention,” Ames said. “With the numbers they've seen, they felt that would be a good way to spend money in Highland County, to help put this program out there for students for that prevention piece of it, and then hoping that will help them later on.

“I know the county has put a lot of money in workforce development,” Ames said at a different part of the meeting. “This program will go hand in hand in helping kids be able to get those jobs that we're trying to help them get.”

In giving background on his company, Chrisman said that he was fortunate to have “a lot of great mentors and older role models” as a youth but recognized that “many of my peers didn’t, and I wanted to dedicate my life to do something about that.

“How we coin our program is ‘ready for life,’ and so what would it take? What skills, what mindsets would you need? What relationships would you need in life?” Chrisman said. “When life happens to you, do you have those kind of relationships to get you through whatever it might be? How do you make decisions?”

Chrisman said his program has been seen growth every year, currently serving “26,000 students across nine states.

“It’s really addressing a felt need that probably everyone in this room who's integrated in the community knows that we have when it comes to adolescents and what they're experiencing,” Chrisman said. “Those core competencies that we teach really become the biggest deterrent to negative outcomes in life. We often fall under a ‘prevention’ heading in a lot of communities, where there are prevention dollars that are able to be allocated toward doing this work in schools, but our kind of output of all of this is we have a lot of different programs, one of them being career readiness, which is kind of where we intersected in our conversations [with the county].

“We have mentoring, we have classroom teaching, we have self-guided materials. We are building online, digital courses that teachers can use at their will at any given time with students who need extra support or with the whole school, and then obviously career readiness to help launch them into another post-high school experience, whatever that might be.”

Britton asked if Chrisman had been in touch with area school superintendents yet. Ames said they “plan on doing that next.” Highland County Economic Development Director Julie Bolender, who attended with county Workforce Development Director Heith Brown, said that Ames had met with their office to explain the program.

“These types of programs increase [students’] ability and their capacity to be better students.” Bolender said. “It’s just setting them up for success, whether it be academically or just better prepared for life and to be a good employee, to be a good asset, to whatever company they choose to work for.

“If this program starts in eighth grade, that's wonderful, and it's even better that University of Cincinnati has chosen Highland County to implement this program.”

Daniels asked “how long” the curriculum lasts, and Chrisman said that it is flexible and based on each school district’s needs and preferences.

“Typically, we go into like, a full grade level in the middle school and a full grade level at the high school, and so every year we would stay in that same grade level,” Chrisman said. “The real impact happens over time, because as you go, 100 percent of your high school students have been through the program, and then they're continuing to have something GOODLIFE, every student, every year depending on their grade level.

“A school could have somebody like myself or Derek come in, and we would come in and deliver a five-session curriculum to them, five weeks in a row, or five days in a row, whichever worked best for the school. Then they have daily or weekly videos that they can do in class, which is no added work for the teacher. All they have to do is play a video, and we introduce on the video the activity that they could do, so they can continue that all year long.”

Chrisman continued that there are “self-guided workbooks” for eighth graders, in-person “classroom experience” for freshman and then the career readiness program for the remainder of high school.

“Also, if the school chose, we have a peer-to-peer mentoring program where upperclassmen can mentor underclassmen,” Chrisman said. “In the grand scheme of things, there could be something every year for every student in middle school, all the way through high school, depending on how much a school wanted to implement it. Or it could be as little as we come in five times and that's it.”

Roades also asked if there was any support for students following graduation. Chrisman said the program encourages “mentorship” by “local community leaders.

“We have tools and resources for even post graduation, but it really has everything to do with the buy-in of the community and what resources they're able to do, but we can help equip them with the tools to do that,” Chrisman said.

Commissioners thanked Chrisman for the information and encouraged him and Ames to continue working with Bolender and Brown on ways to implement the program locally.

In an unrelated discussion, Brady Carter of BESTOhio (Business and Education Success Team of south central Ohio), as well as Bolender, addressed commissioners about an upcoming “Manufacturing Ready” course that will be offered at the Highland County Workforce Development Center in Greenfield.

Free classes will be offered Monday, Dec. 2 through Friday, Dec. 13 from 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. daily (lunch is provided). The training program covers technical manufacturing skills and soft skills, with ongoing career support services and potential job placement.

The course is being sponsored by Shawnee State University, BESTOhio, The GRIT Project and StonePath Business Solutions, in partnership with Future Plans.

The class is open to up to 25 individuals, Carter said. For more information or to sign up, call (216) 202-6813 or visit bit.ly/ManufacturingReady2024.

According to Carter and the BESTOhio website (best-ohio.com), BESTOhio is “a manufacturer-led industry sector partnership focused on working together to build, expand, attract and retain skilled workforce capacity to provide economic stability in our region. We do this through training and development, collaborative employer engagement, career awareness and creative strategies to build a future pipeline of diverse workers. “ The partnership includes Highland, Scioto, Ross, Pike, Adams, Jackson, Vinton and Lawrence counties.

“One leading manufacturer in this partnership is here in Highland County, Seal-Tite, but it's made up of manufacturers all throughout that footprint, as well as community-based organizations in education facilities, whether that be CTCs, high schools, universities,” Carter said. “The point of these partnerships is to help identify and meet primarily workforce or talent needs for manufacturers, and like every industry across the state right now and every part of the state, workforce is really the leading issue. There's a growing shortage for a variety of reasons, and the folks who are available to work oftentimes are faced with new and evolving barriers.”

The two-week class in Greenfield is meant to prepare individuals for work in the manufacturing sector, based on “the feedback of the manufacturers” and the needs they are seeing. John Scanlon of StonePath Business Solutions will be the instructor.

“The first week of the training is going to be primarily focused on technical skills in a manufacturing facility,” Carter said, adding that includes “basic industrial mathematics, a lot of measurements” and also “some leadership skills.

“The second week is going to be more soft skills: coming to work, showing up on time, how to conduct yourself in the workplace,” Carter said. “Along with that, there is a career assessment they'll be taking that week that will help them identify unique skills and abilities that they have, aptitudes and how that might help them further their career, and that will, as well, coincide with a year's worth of support services from another adult career mentor.

“We're really focusing on kind of the two biggest pieces of feedback, the retention rate and kind of where [new hires] are on day one.”

Carter added that Bolender “helped organize stakeholders” — including Brown, Phil Wilson of Seal-Tite and Tara Campbell of OhioMeansJobs — to evaluate whether the county’s industries would benefit from the training course.

“We're also looking for more employer champions who are available and hiring, or potentially hiring, at this time to interview these folks on the last day of the training,” Carter said. “Ideally, all the seats are filled, everybody's equipped and then they move right into a job. That would be the gold standard. But if not, maybe they're interviewed, or at the very least, they have this training that's equipped them and an adult career coach who can help them navigate from there.”

Bolender told commissioners that she has told local manufacturers that if they are looking to hire “between now and Dec. 13,” she is encouraging them to select those candidates and send them to this training program.

“When they come back to you, they're going to be better equipped to be a better employee, and a better team member,” Bolender said. “The last Friday of the class, on the 13th, we're going to have a few things in the morning, and then the employers that have said that they were hiring, they're going to come in, they're going to do the interviews of the class graduates. If your individual is there and they've already been hired, they're free to leave and go back to you and get back on the clock at your plant.

“We have heard the issues, and this is how we're attempting to address those issues. We'd love for our employers to grab ahold of this opportunity and say, ‘Yes, we will commit to hiring graduates,’ or ‘We will send you our brand-new hires and patiently wait for them to come back.’”

Carter added that they will “prioritize” these new hires for admission to the class, “but beyond that, it’s open to anybody” interested.

“This is a great feather in your cap,” Bolender said. “You can put on your résumé that you’ve completed this.

“We need employers, but we also need attendees, and we’re taking registrations now.”

Check back to highlandcountypress.com for more from Wednesday’s commission meeting.

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