Innovative career education programs for Pennsylvania's education and training community
Proven Success: Students Who Completed PA eMentoring Program Enjoy Better Self Esteem
Check out this great write-up about PA eMentoring’s proven positive impact on self-esteem from the Pittsburgh Regional Compact Quarterly!
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This year, as part of its relationship with Highmark Healthy High Five, an initiative of the Highmark Foundation, Pittsburgh Regional Compact Member Smart Futures participated in a data collection and analysis process to measure the affects of online career mentoring on the self esteem of high school-aged youths. The results are positive and summarized below:
Data obtained from the pre- and post-self esteem surveys from 284 program participants during the 2009-10 academic year supported that the PA eMentoring program positively increased the self esteem of student participants. The results showed statistically significant improvements in self-esteem for students who completed the PA eMentoring program, as measured by a pre – and post-program self-esteem survey. Additional data collected support that students participating in PA eMentoring have a better understanding of their own interests, preferences, and aptitudes, as well as a broader awareness of how these match to the work world and a better awareness and broader, more realistic understanding of post secondary opportunities in college and careers.
“These results support our belief in the positive impact having a realistic and appropriate college and career focus can have on young people at a critical time of their lives. We thank the Highmark Foundation, for encouraging us to measure this impact on self esteem. We also thank our other corporate sponsors who supported this program with both employees and dollars. They include BNY Mellon, NexTier Bank, Duquesne Light, UPMC and American Eagle Outfitters. Finally, we thank our foundation supporters who are helping Smart Futures to introduce this program here in southwestern Pennsylvania. These sponsors include the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Buhl Foundation, the Grable Foundation and the Benedum Foundation (via IU1),” said Smart Futures Executive Director David J. Mosey.
Read the complete report
Laura Fisher – Publisher | Philip Cynar – Editor
The Pittsburgh Regional Compact is an employer-driven initiative collaboratively
sponsored by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, business
leaders, educators, students, educational institutions and workforce development
organizations across the 10-county Pittsburgh region.
PA eMentoring Report 2009-2010 School Year
PA eMentoring Report for 2009-10 School Year:
The Positive Affects of Online Career Mentoring
on the Self-Esteem of High School Students
PA eMentoring Report Full Download
Prepared By: Elisa Fioritto, Intern and Research Asst., Indiana University of Pennsylvania
David J. Mosey, Executive Director, Smart Futures
This community report was sponsored by:
The Highmark Foundation
Book Spotlight:”The Mentee’s Guide to Mentoring”
There is a lot of information about how to be an effective mentor, but what about being an effective mentee? Learning to accept mentoring can be just as strenuous as providing mentoring. The Mentee’s Guide to Mentoring* is an accessible book that offers practical advice for being a productive mentee. According to Amazon.com editorial reviews:
The Mentee’s Guide to Mentoring offers practical guidance in the art of establishing and maintaining productive interpersonal communication with mentors. Mentees who are knowledgeable about the dynamics of the one-to-one mentoring relationship – especially from the perspective of the trained mentor – will be in a stronger position to directly contribute to a more effective utilization of time and energy during their own participation in a mentoring program.
* Cohen, Norman. The Mentee’s Guide to Mentoring. HRD Press: 1999.
The Mentor to Greatness: Coach John Wooden
This past weekend a great mentor, former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, passed away. The following is an article published in 2008 about his life as a mentor first and a basketball coach second.
…Almost every day of the week, Wooden makes his way through those doors…and almost every day, someone is waiting for him. To the people who come to see him, Wooden is more than a coach- he is a mentor and a teacher to some of the greatest basketball players who ever lived. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Gail Goodrich have squeezed their oversized frames into these booths. On this day, Wooden is meeting with the great All-American Bill Walton and Andy Hill, a seldom-used guard who went on to become an influential television executive.
“Mentoring is your true legacy,” Wooden tells SUCCESS magazine, explaining why he still schedules meetings like this one at VIP’s Family Restaurant. “It is the greatest inheritance you can give to others. And it should never end. It is why you should get up every day- to teach and be taught.”
Widely regarded as the greatest college coach in basketball history, garnering 10 NCAA National Championship titles during his coaching career at UCLA, John Wooden is responsible for the success of some of the most talented teams in collegiate history.
| However, few coaches have managed to transcend the world of sports to become the sort of life-changing mentor Wooden has proven himself to be. Perhaps it is because he never saw himself as a coach- at least, not primarily. For almost a century, John Robert Wooden has seen himself first and foremost as a teacher. And at 97, he still has a calendar full of handwritten appointments with people with whom he has agreed to meet and talk.
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It is this daily mentoring, he insists, that will get him to 98. He made his living as a coach but lives his life to be a mentor. This, he believes, is his real calling.
“Many people look at mentoring as somewhat of an assignment, something you sign up to do at a local school.” Wooden says. “And while that type of mentoring is important, that is only one form of mentoring. I think if you truly understand the meaning of mentoring, you understand it is as important as parenting; in fact it is just like parenting.”
Aside from parenting, the relationship between coach and athlete can be one of the most influential in a young person’s life, and this is certainly true for Wooden and Walton. Together, these two men led UCLA to an 88 game winning streak and a record that will likely never be broken. The lessons from those days have carried over into the real world, into the lives of everyday people- where the world is their team and making it a better place is the goal. There are some coaches who never hand up their know-how.
Wooden laughs when he remembers how he began the first practice of every season. “I’d walk in and there would be these young men who were wonderful players in high school and my first words to them would be, ‘Today we’re going to learn how to put on our socks and shoes. It is important that you pull your socks on just so. Any wrinkle in the sock will cause rubbing that will cause blisters. Blisters keep you from practicing, which keeps you from getting better.’” Not the inspiring words many of the athletes were expecting, perhaps, but words of wisdom nonetheless.
The lesson the coach was teaching his players was championships are built by paying attention to small details. “And what did I do when my sons were growing up as young basketball players?” Bill Walton asks. “I took each of them to Coach Wooden… and had him teach them how to put their socks on!”
Andy Hill was one of the few athletes who ever played for Wooden who didn’t leave school loving the man. Although he played for Wooden at UCLA, in Hill’s opinion, he should have played a lot more. He was so angry at feeling underutilized that after he graduated, he didn’t talk to Wooden for almost 25 years. This all changed, however, when Hill’s son made him realize the extent of Wooden’s influence.
A talented oboe player, Hill’s son was competing in Europe as part of a very prestigious contest. When he called home to tell his parents how his audition went, he gushed over what a wonderful job he’d done and how thrilled he was with his own performance. Hill was excited: “So you got the spot?” he asked.
“No,” his son explained. “But I did the best I could possibly do.”
Hill was amazed. “My son’s version of success is what Coach Wooden taught me.” He had unwittingly passed on those lessons to his son- he had been mentored in spite of himself-and it was that moment that moved him to pick up the phone and call his old coach.
But even as Wooden has been a tremendous mentor to countless people, he also stresses the other side of the relationship. “An individual needs to be open to being mentored,” he insists. “It is our responsibility to be willing to allow our lives and our minds to be touched, molded and strengthened by the people who surround us- both men and women who history remembers as people of great character, and those who are not so famous.”
There are numerous individuals who have touched Wooden’s life directly, including his father, his former coaches and his wife. But he points to two other people who influenced him greatly: Mother Theresa and Abraham Lincoln, people whose examples and experiences provided lessons Wooden applied in his own life. And that, Wooden explains, is the real secret of mentoring: It’s not about sitting down for a formal talk on life lessons or giving a speech at a school assembly about how to achieve. Mentoring, by Wooden’s definition, is the simple act of living a life worth following.
“It’s something all of us can do- recognizing our responsibility to those around us to model the actions, decisions and behaviors we know to be right,” Wooden says. “It can, but certainly doesn’t have to, be anything more formal than that.”
In the den of Wooden’s Encino home, the bookshelves are stacked two deep with nearly every book every published about Mother Theresa and Abraham Lincoln. Throughout the difficulties he faced in his life, including the death of his wife Nellie almost 25 years ago, Wooden found himself looking to Mother Theresa as a beacon of strength. “When you think of the patience she had in dealing with the great challenges, the suffering, the way she served others,” Wooden says. “How can you not want to make her your role model? Hers was not artificial but true love for others.”
Wooden’s interest in Abraham Lincoln dates back to his days as an undergraduate at Purdue University. He admired the former president’s cool-headed leadership during a difficult era and was inspired by Lincoln’s insistence on living simply and honestly. As he studied more, Wooden focused on this statement from Lincoln: “’With malice toward none.’ What that illustrates is how much he truly cared for people beyond himself. I think getting your mind off yourself and on others is right.”
Because he was receptive to lessons from Lincoln’s life, “I was able to be mentored by a president!” Wooden says with a broad smile.
Wooden makes it clear that you don’t have to be a Mother Theresa or Abraham Lincoln to be a worthy mentor. “They are extraordinary examples.” Wooden says. “But they should also be a reminder to us that anyone can look to anyone else and learn a lesson from them- even if it’s a basketball coach looking to a nun and a statesman.
“We should always hold ourselves up for examination as we seek to teach the people around us, no matter what our job might be,” Wooden says. “And we need to observe the people around us to make sure they’ve learned the lessons we’ve tried to teach. As I like to say, ‘If they haven’t learned, you haven’t taught.’”
Those who played for him point to Wooden’s conduct on the sidelines during games as a great example of how seriously he took teaching. Wooden was legendary for remaining calm rather than pacing, waving wildly or making some other display of apprehension. “I think you’re showing these players that you’re not confident; you’re showing insecurity to your players,” he says. “Sit on the bench. Be secure. You’ve been teaching them; now let them do the job. I say, ‘Now young man, I’ve done my job this week. It’s up to you to see whether I did a good job or not.’”
He insists that mentoring can be any action that inspires another. Every time we watch someone and make a mental note about that individual’s character or conduct, that’s mentoring.
“Every time you greet the grocery store checker with a smile or pick up a piece of litter or pat someone on the back, you very well might be mentoring someone who is watching you,” Wooden says. “It’s really about the choices we make- decisions about how we will observe the world and decisions we make about the way we will act in it. Mentoring can happen at any time or place. It is both something we receive and something we give. This is not a job you turn on and off!”
Just months shy of his 98th birthday, John Wooden never takes a day off.
“When you are through learning, you are through,” a spry Wooden says during an early May interview with SUCCESS. After suffering a broken collarbone and wrist in a fall three months earlier, the first time that Wooden could leave his home and head to breakfast at VIP’s, he was out the door. “I get as much from those conversations today as any I had while I was teaching,” he says. “I wake up wondering who I will see today!”
SUCCESS Magazine August/September 2008
Join Us for Transform Pittsburgh on June 1st!
Smart Futures
Nonprofit Leadership Institute
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Pittsburgh
Coro Pittsburgh and its community partners invite you to become engaged with these exciting organizations!
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
4:30 – 6:30pm
McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant, Rivers Room
Southside Works location
2667 Sidney St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
Free and open to the public.
Light hors d’oeuvres will be served, & drink specials will be available at the private bar during the Happy Hour!
Join Coro Pittsburgh and its community partners Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Greater Pittsburgh, Smart Futures and the NonProfit Leadership Institute for a fun and transformational event.
Learn about opportunities to be actively engaged in your community!
The schedule for the event is as follows:
4:30 Registration
5:00 Brief presentation by hosting non-profit organizations
5:30 Informal networking hour with representatives of host organizations
We kindly request that RSVPs are placed by Friday, May 28th.
For more information or to RSVP, please contact Alicia at abekeny@coropittsburgh.org
New York Times “Plan B: Skip College”
Christopher Furlong/ Getty Images
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: May 14, 2010
Short of becoming a reality TV star, the answer is rote and, some would argue, rather knee-jerk: Earn a college degree.
The idea that four years of higher education will translate into a better job, higher earnings and a happier life — a refrain sure to be repeated this month at graduation ceremonies across the country — has been pounded into the heads of schoolchildren, parents and educators. But there’s an underside to that conventional wisdom. Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)
For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.
That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it.
A small but influential group of economists and educators is pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. It’s time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.
Whether everyone in college needs to be there is not a new question; the subject has been hashed out in books and dissertations for years. But the economic crisis has sharpened that focus, as financially struggling states cut aid to higher education.
Among those calling for such alternatives are the economists Richard K. Vedder of Ohio University and Robert I. Lerman of American University, the political scientist Charles Murray, and James E. Rosenbaum, an education professor at Northwestern. They would steer some students toward intensive, short-term vocational and career training, through expanded high school programs and corporate apprenticeships.
“It is true that we need more nanosurgeons than we did 10 to 15 years ago,” said Professor Vedder, founder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a research nonprofit in Washington. “But the numbers are still relatively small compared to the numbers of nurses’ aides we’re going to need. We will need hundreds of thousands of them over the next decade.”
And much of their training, he added, might be feasible outside the college setting.
College degrees are simply not necessary for many jobs. Of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate over the next decade in the United States, only seven typically require a bachelor’s degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor’s) and postsecondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.
Professor Vedder likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers have bachelor’s degrees, according to a 1999 federal study.
“Some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education,” he said.
Professor Lerman, the American University economist, said some high school graduates would be better served by being taught how to behave and communicate in the workplace.
Such skills are ranked among the most desired — even ahead of educational attainment — in many surveys of employers. In one 2008 survey of more than 2,000 businesses in Washington State, employers said entry-level workers appeared to be most deficient in being able to “solve problems and make decisions,” “resolve conflict and negotiate,” “cooperate with others” and “listen actively.”
Yet despite the need, vocational programs, which might teach such skills, have been one casualty in the push for national education standards, which has been focused on preparing students for college.
While some educators propose a radical renovation of the community college system to teach work readiness, Professor Lerman advocates a significant national investment by government and employers in on-the-job apprenticeship training. He spoke with admiration, for example, about a program in the CVS pharmacy chain in which aspiring pharmacists’ assistants work as apprentices in hundreds of stores, with many going on to study to become full-fledged pharmacists themselves.
“The health field is an obvious case where the manpower situation is less than ideal,” he said. “I would try to work with some of the major employers to develop these kinds of programs to yield mastery in jobs that do demand high expertise.”
While no country has a perfect model for such programs, Professor Lerman pointed to a modest study of a German effort done last summer by an intern from that country. She found that of those who passed the Abitur, the exam that allows some Germans to attend college for almost no tuition, 40 percent chose to go into apprenticeships in trades, accounting, sales management, and computers.
“Some of the people coming out of those apprenticeships are in more demand than college graduates,” he said, “because they’ve actually managed things in the workplace.”
Still, by urging that some students be directed away from four-year colleges, academics like Professor Lerman are touching a third rail of the education system. At the very least, they could be accused of lowering expectations for some students. Some critics go further, suggesting that the approach amounts to educational redlining, since many of the students who drop out of college are black or non-white Hispanics.
Peggy Williams, a counselor at a high school in suburban New York City with a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, understands the argument for erring on the side of pushing more students toward college.
“If we’re telling kids, ‘You can’t cut the mustard, you shouldn’t go to college or university,’ then we’re shortchanging them from experiencing an environment in which they might grow,” she said.
But Ms. Williams said she would be more willing to counsel some students away from the precollege track if her school, Mount Vernon High School, had a better vocational education alternative. Over the last decade, she said, courses in culinary arts, nursing, dentistry and heating and ventilation system repair were eliminated. Perhaps 1 percent of this year’s graduates will complete a concentration in vocational courses, she said, compared with 40 percent a decade ago.
There is another rejoinder to the case against college: People with college and graduate degrees generally earn more than those without them, and face lower risks of unemployment, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Even those who experience a few years of college earn more money, on average, with less risk of unemployment, than those who merely graduate from high school, said Morton Schapiro, an economist who is the president of Northwestern University.
“You get some return even if you don’t get the sheepskin,” Mr. Shapiro said.
He warned against overlooking the intangible benefits of a college experience — even an incomplete experience — for those who might not apply what they learned directly to their chosen work.
“It’s not just about the economic return,” he said. “Some college, whether you complete it or not, contributes to aesthetic appreciation, better health and better voting behavior.”
Nonetheless, Professor Rosenbaum said, high school counselors and teachers are not doing enough to alert students unlikely to earn a college degree to the perilous road ahead.
“I’m not saying don’t get the B.A,” he said. “I’m saying, let’s get them some intervening credentials, some intervening milestones. Then, if they want to go further in their education, they can.”
” Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.”
- John Crosby
Vote for PA eMentoring and help us win $50k through the Pepsi Refresh Project!
Smart Futures needs your votes! We have submitted an entry for a $50,000 grant for our PA eMentoring program in the Pepsi Refresh Project for the month of May. If you haven’t heard yet, Pepsi is giving away $1,300,000 every month to people, businesses, and non-profit organizations that submit an idea that will have a positive impact in the community.
HOW TO VOTE:
1. Go to http://www.refresheverything.com/ementor
2. Click ‘Join Refresh Everything’ at the bottom of the page
3. Sign up for an account (it takes about 10 seconds)
4. Click ‘Vote for this Idea’ on our PA eMentoring entry page
VOTE EVERY DAY IN MAY!!!
We need help spreading the word. Please forward this email to your co-workers, students age 13 and over, family, and friends. Every vote will help! Thank you so much for all of your support!
Check Out Upcoming Trainings at the Mentoring Partnership of SW PA!
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| Saturday, May 1, 2010
Mentoring 101: What Every Mentor Should Know 9:30am-Noon Mentoring 205: Cultural Diversity 10:00am-Noon Mentoring 206: Values Clarification 10:00am-Noon Mentoring 202: Maintaining & Establishing Boundaries 12:30pm-2:30pm Mentoring 207: Stress in Adolescence 12:30pm-2:30pm Wednesday, May 19, 2010 Mentoring 102 Expanded (expanded component – Communication) 5:00pm-8:30pm To register and view course descriptions visit: Trainings for Mentors |
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April Showers Bring Financial Literacy Month!
In 2003, The United States Congress officially recognized April as Financial Literacy Month in order to promote healthy financial practices and habits. The need for efficient financial education is more dire than ever and Smart Futures is proud to be a part of the community supplying the resources.
Smart Futures has partnered with Wells Fargo to develop Financial Literacy 101: an online financial literacy resource built around the award-winning Hands On Banking® program. Hands on Banking® provides best-in-class, online learning content while Smart Futures provides pre- and post-assessments and a student tracking system allowing educators to monitor and document student progress. The program age-appropriately tests and enhances student knowledge on a variety of financial literacy topics through three different modules targeted to young adults (grades 9-12), teens (grades 6-8), and kids (grades 4-5).
Financial Literacy 101 is free to all Pennsylvanian schools and community-based organizations (CBO’s) through a grant from the Heinz Endowments. Along with Financial Literacy 101, two other fun and educational financial literacy resources are available as well. NFL Financial Football allows students score touchdowns based on their financial knowledge and Disney’s Hot Shot Business teaches younger kids about entrepreneurialism.
For more information about Financial Literacy 101 go to: www.smartfutures.org
For more information on Financial Literacy Month go to: www.financialliteracymonth.com