Embedded Files
Work-Based Learning Coordinators need to be knowledgeable about the different kinds of WBL activities and have a clear vision for how they build off one another. To that end, it’s helpful to think of WBL activities as scaffolded into three sequential stages: awareness, exploration, and development.
Three Stages
Three Stages
Students broaden their awareness of different careers and identify their interests.
WBL Activities
WBL Activities
Career Fairs, Career Interest Assessments, and Guest Speakers
Key Considerations
Key Considerations
What tools will you use to get to know your students? Awareness involves deeply understanding student interests so you can connect them to different postsecondary pathways that are meaningful. Many schools use tools like Xello or Overgrad to provide in-depth support for students trying to identify career interests and college majors.
Students participate in a guided exploration of their high-interest careers and the focused skills required.
Community Service / Volunteering, Job Shadowing, Mentoring
How will you build and maintain relationships with employers? Exploration requires setting up opportunities for students to job shadow or receive mentoring. Some schools build in time when one WBL Coordinator is leaving and another starting, for the former Coordinator to personally introduce the new one to employers with whom they have a working relationship.
Students engage in the development of career-aligned skills and understanding through work experiences.
Internships, Entrepreneurship, and Certificate-granting Programs
How do you support students with different levels of preparedness? Development requires having scaffolds for exposing students to opportunities to develop their skills. For instance, some schools offer on-site and offsite internships. An offsite internship is a good fit for a student who has already had opportunities to build and practice skills for work readiness, particularly students who are closer to graduation.
Here are three great resources for WBL activities created by the NYC Office of Student Pathways and aligned to each stage:
The LTW WBL Opportunities Grid is an easy-to-read spreadsheet, customized to the LTW program, that defines the WBL activities named above and provides key guidance for supporting students in each of them.
The NYCPS WBL Learning Toolkit is a comprehensive resource, designed for CTE but appropriate for the LTW program, that supports school leaders, WBL Coordinators, and employers in developing a holistic understanding of work-based learning and how to implement all facets of it well.
The FRNYC Career Navigation Roadmap (forthcoming) serves as a roadmap to help students navigate their education path, explore college and career options, and make informed decisions for a strong postsecondary pathway to a choice-filled and economically secure future.
In interviews and focus groups, we heard a common refrain from LTW practitioners: ‘Tell me if you hear of good certificate programs.’ On the Certificate Programs page of this site, we get into some of what makes a “good” certificate program and the challenges with finding them, as well as connect to a centralized, continuously updated list of certificate programs used by WBL Coordinators from across NYC Transfer Schools and YABCs.
The Internships page is our largest and most developed resource on this site, with vetted tools and in-depth guidance for LTW internships at their best. These resources are more robust because WBL Coordinators have developed more systematic feedback loops and evaluation tools for internships, so the practices are ready to be widely shared.
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