This episode explores how District C’s Teamship model and educator Coaching Institute equip students with real-world problem-solving and collaborative skills through scalable school–industry partnerships that prepare diverse learners for the modern workforce.
Podcast Transcript
00:00:05 Intro
What could happen if we take our workforce to new heights? Workforce on the Mic, presented by NAWDP, brings you inspirational stories, innovative solutions, and expert insights that are shaping the future of the workforce.
Tune in for dynamic conversations that motivate and transform the workforce development community. And now, on to the episode.
00:00:28 Alexis Franks
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, all you workforce warriors across the country.
00:00:34 Alexis Franks
My name is Alexis Franks, and I am your Director of Membership with the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals.
00:00:43 Alexis Franks
And in today’s episode, we will learn about the powerful role that educators play in shaping the future of workforce.
00:00:52 Alexis Franks
We’ll explore how District C is preparing both educators and students to thrive in today’s economy by blending real-world problem solving with meaningful employer partnerships.
00:01:07 Alexis Franks
From their coaching institute that equips teachers to guide collaborative experiences, to the teamship program that connects students with businesses,
00:01:16 Alexis Franks
District C is showing us what it means to create a true two-way value exchange where students can build critical skills and employers can gain fresh insights.
00:01:30 Alexis Franks
So today we have with us Mr.
00:01:32 Alexis Franks
Dan Gonzalez with District C.
00:01:35 Alexis Franks
Welcome to you, Dan.
00:01:37 Dan Gonzalez
Thank you so much, Alexis.
00:01:39 Dan Gonzalez
I appreciate you having me on.
00:01:40 Alexis Franks
Yes, and we’re going to do what we call passing the mic.
00:01:44 Alexis Franks
So we’re going to pass the mic over to you.
00:01:47 Alexis Franks
And I just have a few questions for you today, Dan, as we peer into your world.
00:01:52 Alexis Franks
But can you start off just telling us a little bit about where you are, what your journey has been like in workforce development, and what you do with District C?
00:02:02 Dan Gonzalez
Yeah, so I am, I consider myself a lifelong educator.
00:02:06 Dan Gonzalez
I started as a classroom physics teacher and spent many years after that
00:02:12 Dan Gonzalez
tutoring students in multiple subjects, got into some for-profit education work in the test prep industry for many years, and helping students get into graduate school.
00:02:27 Dan Gonzalez
And then about 8, nine years ago, my wife and I decided to start a non-profit called District C.
00:02:33 Dan Gonzalez
And our goal was to, our mission statement is prepare the next generation of diverse talent for modern work.
00:02:41 Dan Gonzalez
And we’ve been alive and kicking for 8 1/2 years.
00:02:45 Dan Gonzalez
We’re still going strong.
00:02:47 Dan Gonzalez
We’re about to reach our 10,000th student.
00:02:50 Dan Gonzalez
Most of those are high school students, but have some middle school students mixed in there and some higher ed students.
00:02:56 Dan Gonzalez
Have trained almost 400 educators.
00:02:59 Dan Gonzalez
and have worked with about 700 business partners through our flagship program, which we call Teamship.
00:03:04 Alexis Franks
So you mentioned the work that you do with educators.
00:03:08 Alexis Franks
And as we were preparing for our episode today, I know that we talked a lot about that important role, that critical role that educators have in making sure that students are really prepared if they choose not to go to college, if they choose an employment and
00:03:26 Alexis Franks
different employment route, that they’re prepared for the real world.
00:03:31 Alexis Franks
So can you talk a little bit about what that experience looks like for educators and how you’re helping them to prepare students?
00:03:38 Dan Gonzalez
Yeah, great question.
00:03:40 Dan Gonzalez
And maybe I’ll start just by sharing a bit about what Teamship is, what the program model is, why we built it, and then I can go into a bit on the role of the teacher.
00:03:49 Dan Gonzalez
So one of the things that has become obvious, I think, to all of us is that artificial intelligence
00:03:55 Dan Gonzalez
is upending the labor market.
00:03:58 Dan Gonzalez
And I think for us educators, the primary question we need to be asking is, how do we define human value in a labor market that has been upended by artificial intelligence?
00:04:13 Dan Gonzalez
What does it mean to be a great human and a contributing human in that labor market?
00:04:18 Dan Gonzalez
And the answer to that question is really important for how we prepare young people today for their careers tomorrow.
00:04:24 Dan Gonzalez
Our contention is that as artificial intelligence, automation and robotics, computers, increasingly take over the routine, procedural, task-based work that humans used to do, humans are going to have to be great at being human.
00:04:42 Dan Gonzalez
Namely, they’re going to have to be great at
00:04:45 Dan Gonzalez
mobilizing others, coordinating with others around common purpose, collaborating with others to solve new problems, and empathetic, curious, question askers, et cetera.
00:05:00 Dan Gonzalez
In other words, boil that down to, as we do at District C, to be a contributor in the modern economy, you need to be great at working with others to solve complex problems, working in teams to solve complex problems.
00:05:15 Dan Gonzalez
That’s our entire learning objective, is to help students get better at working in teams to solve problems.
00:05:22 Dan Gonzalez
We think that is the core competency needed across every job, across every industry, across every sector.
00:05:31 Dan Gonzalez
Yes, you will need technical skills.
00:05:33 Dan Gonzalez
Of course, that’s true.
00:05:34 Dan Gonzalez
But what employers tell us time and time again is we can teach you the tech stuff.
00:05:41 Dan Gonzalez
What we have trouble finding are people that know how to work with others to solve novel problems.
00:05:46 Dan Gonzalez
And so that’s what we’re focused on.
00:05:48 Dan Gonzalez
So the way that we do this is through a program called Teamship.
00:05:52 Dan Gonzalez
You can think of Teamship as a reimagined team-based internship where teams of students solve real problems for real businesses in the community.
00:06:04 Dan Gonzalez
And all the while, they’re getting coached by a teacher or an educator that we call a coach,
00:06:09 Dan Gonzalez
that has been through our training and certification process.
00:06:13 Dan Gonzalez
So when we started this work back in 2017, we spent the entire first year watching teams of three or four high school students try to solve problems for a business.
00:06:24 Dan Gonzalez
And what we learned was, number one, they appreciate the experience.
00:06:28 Dan Gonzalez
It’s fun for them.
00:06:29 Dan Gonzalez
It’s motivating for them to work on a real problem.
00:06:31 Dan Gonzalez
Number 2,
00:06:33 Dan Gonzalez
they don’t really get better at the work unless you actively coach them, which at that point, we weren’t doing a great job of coaching.
00:06:41 Dan Gonzalez
And so what we saw was, yeah, they’re doing the experience, but we’re not seeing a ton of growth on the core team-based problem-solving skills that we wanted to see.
00:06:50 Dan Gonzalez
So from there, we built a coaching model, a coaching philosophy that we now train other educators on.
00:06:58 Dan Gonzalez
And this is, I think, core to the model is
00:07:02 Dan Gonzalez
proactive, engaged, expert coaching.
00:07:06 Dan Gonzalez
What we saw when we started to do that was the needle began to move.
00:07:10 Dan Gonzalez
Students were getting better at working in teams.
00:07:12 Dan Gonzalez
They were getting better at hearing voices.
00:07:15 Dan Gonzalez
They were getting better at asking good questions.
00:07:17 Dan Gonzalez
They were getting better at diagnosing root causes for problems.
00:07:21 Dan Gonzalez
And it all comes down to the role of the teacher, the coach.
00:07:25 Dan Gonzalez
And so I think this is one of the things that differentiates TeamShift from many other work-based learning models.
00:07:30 Dan Gonzalez
is I think historically, we’ve assumed that as long as you connect the employer with the student, everything else will take care of itself.
00:07:38 Dan Gonzalez
And what we’ve observed is that that’s just not true.
00:07:41 Dan Gonzalez
The experience requires, if you want to grow student skills, the experience requires proactive coaching.
00:07:48 Dan Gonzalez
And so get all the way back to your question, that is really the role of the teacher in this equation.
00:07:55 Alexis Franks
So you really brought it full circle though.
00:07:57 Alexis Franks
I think that helps us to understand for the success of those that may be participants in our programs, in your case for students.
00:08:06 Alexis Franks
having and making sure that we have equipped coaches and educators to provide that support.
00:08:13 Alexis Franks
There’s some things that we just don’t know what we don’t know.
00:08:17 Alexis Franks
And unless someone shows our guides the way, that really can make the difference in the experience for a student and anyone on the search for their career in their career journey.
00:08:27 Alexis Franks
So I really appreciate how you brought it full circle for us.
00:08:31 Alexis Franks
And can you talk a little bit about what that training looks like for an educator?
00:08:37 Dan Gonzalez
Yep.
00:08:39 Dan Gonzalez
Great question.
00:08:40 Dan Gonzalez
So as you can imagine, making the transition from being the person who stands up in front of a classroom and says the things that you know, right?
00:08:52 Dan Gonzalez
You’re basically communicating things that you know about a topic in a traditional classroom.
00:08:56 Dan Gonzalez
Making that transition from that point to a proactive,
00:09:01 Dan Gonzalez
and engaged coach of collaborative problem solving, that’s a pretty big transition.
00:09:07 Dan Gonzalez
Your role.
00:09:07 Dan Gonzalez
as the educator is very different.
00:09:10 Dan Gonzalez
What we notice is that when teachers put students in teams to do teamwork on virtually anything, oftentimes the teacher kind of loses their voice a little bit because they don’t know what their role is supposed to be in that context.
00:09:26 Dan Gonzalez
And so what the Coaching Institute does, our professional development experience, what that does is it helps to
00:09:33 Dan Gonzalez
define the role of the coach in the teamship environment.
00:09:36 Dan Gonzalez
It helps the coach understand what it is that they’re observing for as they’re observing student work.
00:09:43 Dan Gonzalez
It helps the coach understand how to make positive, proactive coaching moves to move the needle for students.
00:09:50 Dan Gonzalez
And all of that takes time.
00:09:52 Dan Gonzalez
It’s A transition.
00:09:53 Dan Gonzalez
And so our coaching institute’s a pretty intensive experience.
00:09:56 Dan Gonzalez
It’s about 40 hours of professional development time.
00:10:00 Dan Gonzalez
And again, we’re pretty convinced that this is the key to the entire model.
00:10:04 Dan Gonzalez
And so I think it’s well worth that investment of time.
00:10:08 Alexis Franks
Well, Dan, that’s great to hear.
00:10:11 Alexis Franks
We definitely love and appreciate the professional development strategies that go into training educators.
00:10:18 Alexis Franks
And really all workforce professionals seek and are hungry for that type of education to provide better services to all of their participants.
00:10:28 Alexis Franks
So those are some key strategies.
00:10:30 Alexis Franks
strategies that everyone should be able to learn and take away to serve their students better.
00:10:38 Alexis Franks
So you’re talking a little bit about the approach, the difference in approach that educators or anyone in participating in District C can have with students.
00:10:49 Alexis Franks
How does this mindset shift the perception of what workforce looks like in the educational setting?
00:10:59 Dan Gonzalez
Yeah.
00:11:01 Dan Gonzalez
I’ll tell a quick story.
00:11:03 Dan Gonzalez
So when I was young, I thought I wanted to be an engineer.
00:11:08 Dan Gonzalez
And so it occurred to me like, okay, if I want to be an engineer, I should probably get a summer internship.
00:11:13 Dan Gonzalez
So I went to my dad and I said, hey, dad, I think I need an internship, right?
00:11:18 Dan Gonzalez
He’s like, yeah, that makes sense.
00:11:19 Dan Gonzalez
Let me make a few phone calls.
00:11:21 Dan Gonzalez
So he called a friend.
00:11:23 Dan Gonzalez
And within a week, I had an internship lined up.
00:11:26 Dan Gonzalez
No resume, no interview.
00:11:28 Dan Gonzalez
I had the internship.
00:11:30 Dan Gonzalez
And I think this is all too common, that students with family connections and social capital tend to get the kinds of experiences they need to advance their skills towards their career.
00:11:43 Dan Gonzalez
But the vast majority of students will never get these opportunities if someone’s not advocating for them.
00:11:49 Dan Gonzalez
So one of the core principles of the Teamship design is that it is designed to be embedded at school
00:11:59 Dan Gonzalez
during the school day.
00:12:01 Dan Gonzalez
So if you’re a student who has transportation issues, you can get Teamship at school.
00:12:06 Dan Gonzalez
If you’re a student who has to take care of grandparents during after-school hours, not to worry, Teamship is delivered, it’s designed to be delivered in school during the school day.
00:12:15 Dan Gonzalez
So by doing that, by making it part of the core academic experience, we’re creating equitable access for many more students than would experience it otherwise.
00:12:25 Dan Gonzalez
And I think
00:12:26 Dan Gonzalez
I think this is a really important problem that we need to solve and a pain point we need to solve across work-based learning opportunities is how do we bring these experiences to students?
00:12:37 Dan Gonzalez
Part of Teamship is we do all of the business partner sourcing and matching with Teamship programs.
00:12:43 Dan Gonzalez
So again, if you’re a student who doesn’t have the social capital that you need to go out and find a business partner to work for,
00:12:51 Dan Gonzalez
District C will bring that to your school in the form of the Teamship program.
00:12:57 Alexis Franks
Wow.
00:12:58 Alexis Franks
And it really, truly is a shift as we’re continuing to solve these new problems that come in.
00:13:05 Alexis Franks
We really do have to think creatively and innovatively about how we’re providing services.
00:13:10 Alexis Franks
This is just one example of some great work, Dan, that you’re sharing.
00:13:15 Alexis Franks
So we really appreciate that.
00:13:16 Alexis Franks
But it’s
00:13:17 Alexis Franks
time for us to rise to that challenge and really shift that mindset.
00:13:21 Alexis Franks
So we appreciate that.
00:13:23 Alexis Franks
So Dan, I promise I won’t keep you for too much longer.
00:13:26 Alexis Franks
I just have one more question for you today.
00:13:30 Alexis Franks
For any of our listeners, any workforce professional across the country that wants to seek out opportunities to build stronger partnerships with education, with employers, what advice would you have for that individual today?
00:13:47 Dan Gonzalez
Yeah, 3 words, make it easy.
00:13:52 Dan Gonzalez
I think there is on both sides of this equation, the education community wants to engage industry.
00:13:59 Dan Gonzalez
On the other side, industry wants to be of service to the education community because they realize that their talent pipeline is made or broken on the education system.
00:14:11 Dan Gonzalez
And so there is a strong will on both sides, at least
00:14:16 Dan Gonzalez
from what I can tell through the conversations that I have.
00:14:19 Dan Gonzalez
And the thing that, even though they’re strong-willed, there’s often this gap between them as they work to negotiate, well, what are we doing together?
00:14:28 Dan Gonzalez
And there are some, of course, tried and true proven models, apprenticeship models, et cetera, out there that are fantastic.
00:14:35 Dan Gonzalez
But even kind of further upstream than that, I think we need really easy to implement programs
00:14:43 Dan Gonzalez
to connect those two sides of the equation.
00:14:45 Dan Gonzalez
And so we try to design TeamShip to be just that, the thing that can plug in between those two puzzle pieces to snap it all together.
00:14:53 Dan Gonzalez
So what we say to business professionals is, look, your role in this experience is you’re going to supply a problem
00:15:02 Dan Gonzalez
And you’re going to offer up 4 hours of your time to meet with three teams of students.
00:15:07 Dan Gonzalez
And we’re going to tell you exactly what those meetings are going to be like.
00:15:11 Dan Gonzalez
We’re going to prepare you for those.
00:15:12 Dan Gonzalez
We’re going to help you scope that problem so that it’s accessible for those teenage students or whatever it might be.
00:15:18 Dan Gonzalez
And so the business partner comes out thinking, I don’t have to have 10 students on my campus for the whole summer or for the spring semester.
00:15:28 Dan Gonzalez
I don’t have to assign a manager to manage these students.
00:15:31 Dan Gonzalez
No, we’re making it really easy.
00:15:33 Dan Gonzalez
It’s a four to five hour commitment over 5 weeks.
00:15:36 Dan Gonzalez
And they can say yes to that pretty easily.
00:15:39 Dan Gonzalez
For our school district partners, it’s telling them we’re bringing all of the business relationships to this experience.
00:15:48 Dan Gonzalez
they want to focus on what they do best, which is working with students.
00:15:51 Dan Gonzalez
And so a lot of times they don’t have the capacity or the tools to be out in the community engaging industry.
00:15:57 Dan Gonzalez
And so what we do is we bring that to the table for them.
00:16:01 Dan Gonzalez
So each halves of the equation have reason to look at this model and say, oh, wow, this is going to make it really easy for us to engage.
00:16:07 Dan Gonzalez
This is a no-brainer.
00:16:09 Dan Gonzalez
So I would say that’s a big learning for us.
00:16:12 Dan Gonzalez
And for those out there thinking about how to connect those two stakeholders,
00:16:17 Dan Gonzalez
It really is about making it as easy as possible for them to say yes.
00:16:22 Alexis Franks
Awesome, Dan.
00:16:23 Alexis Franks
Well, here on Workforce on the mic, we do have mic drop moments and you have given us our mic drop moment for today.
00:16:33 Alexis Franks
We definitely want all workforce professionals to make it easy, make it easy for those industry partners, make it easy for your students, make it easy
00:16:43 Alexis Franks
to participate in work-based learning opportunities and really to take as much away from that experience as possible.
00:16:51 Alexis Franks
Dan, we appreciate you so much for joining us today.
00:16:56 Alexis Franks
It has been a pleasure learning about District C and the work that you all are doing.
00:17:01 Alexis Franks
If anyone is interested in learning a little bit more about your program and the services that you offer, what is the best way to connect with you, whether it’s social media or personal?
00:17:14 Dan Gonzalez
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Dan Gonzalez, and you can find District C at districtc.co, districtc.co.
00:17:23 Dan Gonzalez
A lot of C’s in there.
00:17:25 Dan Gonzalez
I’ll take you a couple of tries to type that correctly, but yeah, that’s our web address.
00:17:31 Alexis Franks
All right, Dan, again, thank you so much.
00:17:34 Alexis Franks
We appreciate the work that you’re doing with students and educators, and we hope to have you back soon.
00:17:41 Dan Gonzalez
That sounds great.
00:17:41 Dan Gonzalez
Thanks, Alexis.
00:17:42 Dan Gonzalez
So good to meet you, and thanks for the work that you all do.
00:17:45 Alexis Franks
Thank you.
00:17:50 Conclusion
Thank you for listening to Workforce on the Mic, presented by NAWDP.
Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the podcasts. To learn more about NAWDP and to become a member, visit www.nawdp.org.That’s www.nawdp.org.
