Safety helmets and gloves hang from a rack on a mining site
In workforce development, there are buzzwords that pop up in nearly every conversation. Industry credentials. Or even better, stackable industry credentials. Soft Skills. Self-paced. Work-based learning.
But what if the real buzzwords are healing and hope?
In speaking with leaders from Oakmont Education, a school network educating more than 5,000 students across 18 campuses in Ohio and Iowa, it is clear that before students can get the what of workforce development, they need to cultivate the why. With outlets like the Wall Street Journal calling Generation Z “The Toolbelt Generation,” Oakmont can offer broader lessons for a growing, and necessary, movement.
According to Cris Gulacy-Worrel and Jerry Farley, two vice-presidents of the organization, Oakmont teaches students that are “over age and under credited.” Many of these students have dropped out of school entirely, have become engaged with the criminal justice system, have become parents, or some combination of the three.
And while dropout recovery programs have existed for decades, Oakmont takes a different approach, focusing on four pillars. And it is these pillars that make them stand out.
The first is heal. The average student Oakmont teaches has had multiple adverse childhood experiences, serious traumas ranging from abuse and neglect to seeing their parents incarcerated or die to family drug addiction or other forms of instability. By the time they get to Oakmont, they are in survival mode, simply trying to get from one day to the next. It is impossible to get students trapped in that mindset to start thinking about career development or a longer-term life plan, so Oakmont provides services to the students to stabilize their lives and get them in a position to learn.
Then comes hope. As Dr. Farley impressed upon me during our conversation, students need to believe that tomorrow can be better if they are going to invest the time and energy in school. If they think that tomorrow will be just as terrible as today, or worse, what is the point? Showing students that a better life is possible, and that while it will take work, the payoff will be worth it, is an essential element to preparing students for the program that will follow. Students need to become resilient, and a key element of resilience is realizing that short term setbacks are inevitable, but by keeping at it, they can overcome them.
The third pillar is workforce development. For those familiar with the field, this will sound more familiar. Students are tasked with earning stackable and transferable industry credentials that will be recognized across state lines and by different educational bodies if they want to build on them in the future. With Oakmont, much of this learning happens in the real world via work placements and not just in the classroom.
The final pillar is placement. Oakmont has developed relationships with employers in multiple industries, from construction to manufacturing to healthcare (and others) where their graduates can be placed for strong, entry-level jobs. Many of these students would have done some of their school-based work placements at these organizations, giving them essentially a multi-month trial period before getting hired. Because of these strong relationships, Oakmont graduates can command a wage $2-$4 dollars more per hour than typical first-time employees.
And it is this support that Oakmont provides during placement that is particularly interesting. Many of these young people are in precarious life positions when they are trying to get their start in the working world. They do not have the same safety net that young people from middle- and upper-income families have. If they get sick, or if someone in their family gets sick, or parents come in or out of the picture unexpectedly, their work can suffer.
Now what happens to young people from socially connected households when something like this happens? If you have to spend a week in the hospital, but your father is a higher up in the carpenters union and helped you get your apprenticeship, he can make a phone call to your crew chief and make sure you get slack cut to you. If you get a job at the bank because your boss was in the same sorority or went to the same private high school, you can get the benefit of the doubt, and slack will be cut to you too. That is not always the case for Oakmont students.
But Oakmont can help. They have built relationships with employers and can go to bat for young people like the union boss dad or sorority-sister vice president would. That can help students weather problems and stay employed.
In talking with Cris Gulacy-Worrel and Jerry Farley, it is clear that so much of their work (and given that they were a finalist for the 2022 Yass Prize there is good reason to believe they are meeting with success at that work) is actually about weaving these young people back into the social fabric that their chaotic upbringings have ripped them out of. It is about giving students a purpose, enmeshing them in a community, and helping them find a job that can support themselves. Each of those elements is important.
Jobs are about more than just a paycheck. When Oakmont students work with Habitat for Humanity to build a house for a disabled veteran, they can stand back at the end of the day proud of what they have done. When they work in elder care and spend the afternoon playing cards with someone that might not get a single visitor that week, they can realize that they are important and needed in this world.
Oakmont is a tremendously interesting model for workforce development, and one that offers lessons for the field as a whole.
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