The Transformational Effects of the Jobs for America’s Graduates Program

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Couple ounces of prevention to make sure that they’re more successful later on in that 11th and 12th grade.

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And so, really helping those students, um, again, enact the study skills that hopefully they learned in seventh and eighth grade.

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But also, like, testing out those career pathways, um, in Indiana, it’s becoming… more, um, more of a focus at a much younger age to start, you know, hitting your plan and Walking through your plan for all four years of high school, and so JAG has been a way to sort of help come alongside schools

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Um, to help those students determine their pathway at a younger age, and then really ensure that they have all the right steps, resources, tools, supports to continue to do that in, you know, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade.

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Um, we do this through kind of a variety of ways, and so this is just a little bit of a snapshot of what the high school model looks like.

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And so, kind of, the number of students, um, so we are teaching You know, 40 to 55 kids, they are certainly not all in one class. It certainly works a little bit better if you’ve got small groups.

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Um, which is certainly something that can be replicated in out-of-school kind of cohort models. You know, you’ve got a few groups of people who can work together, and they… they’re learning in those small groups. Certainly can be a time saver.

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Um, you know, from a case manager standpoint, to not have to do… continuously one-on-one individual services.

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But there is also a space for that in the JAG classroom, where, you know, a kid might be going through something really terrible at that time, and those services then transitioned to intensive and individualized services.

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Um, so it’s not all just about that class time. But they do receive course credits.

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Um, they are learning these JAG National curriculums. There are 37 core competencies, but up to 88.

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Um, and then most notably, I think. When it comes to curriculum and instruction for students.

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The JAG philosophy is really focused on introduction of the skill set.

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Practice of the skill set, and then mastery of the skill set.

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Um, and so, you know, taking resumes, for example, right? The instruction really becomes Here is a resume.

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Then the practice is, let’s build a resume for Superman, or Spider-Man, right? What would his skills be? And, like, understanding how to put all those pieces together in kind of a fun and playful way.

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And then the mastery then becomes that process of, okay, here’s mine resume that I’ve made for myself as a student.

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And do I know how to update that as I get more jobs, or as I learn more skills, or as I… you know, achieve some other positions in, you know, school leadership or something. Um, so that that’s a skill that they will have until they are in their, you know, 40s and 50s. That’s something that they learn while they’re in high school.

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Another key component of the JAG programming is the idea of belonging.

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Um, and that sense of community and family that exists in JAG, And a lot of that happens through activities in our career association. So it’s essentially Uh, a student government or a student leadership body, but specifically for JAG kids.

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Um, if you remember from the barriers, we’ve got a lot of students who don’t belong to anything, they may never have played sports, they may have been bullied, etc.

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And so the Career Association is really a way for them to take… take their community of just JAG kids, and then plan projects. Um, community service activities, so we’ve got students who are doing all manner of things, um, throughout the year, um, some of which have become standard in a particular community where

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They do a 12 Trees of Christmas every year for the last 15 years in Brazil, Indiana.

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Um, or, you know, students who are doing work with nursing homes, animal shelters, veterans service organizations.

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A lot of students are doing things just on the school campus, so if there’s a grounds cleanup.

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Um, that’s a day and a thing that the students can plan.

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But it’s really providing them then those kind of, like, micro-opportunities within the career association.

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To understand how to plan an event. How to contact sponsors, how to keep track of, maybe, funds that they might have raised for a particular project.

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Um, so it’s a bunch of those other sort of simple life skills, but they’re learning it through doing and through giving.

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Um, in the Career Association. A couple of other things that are sort of core to the JAG programming, uh, field trips, so having students go on college or, uh, industry tours.

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Guest speakers, bringing those people into the classroom. I don’t know about anybody else, but students can’t take Field trips every week in school, because they have other things that they’re supposed to be doing, so making sure that there is a platform for

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Industry to come in and talk about their career journey so that our students can actually see themselves in whatever that future pathway may be.

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Lots of opportunities for job shadowing, and as I said earlier, work-based learning experiences.

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Um, but then the connection to mentors, um, tutors. Having, you know, even folks from our American Job Center come into the classroom to maybe be another voice to provide some of those lessons to students.

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Um, so now that they also know there’s another expert somewhere outside of school.

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That they can go to and connect with. Um, and then, much like WIOA, um, I think the central and most core thing that we do is have great data.

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And so we are providing, on top of all the things that we’re tracking in the classroom and sort of pre-classroom and development goals.

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Is that one year of follow-up services, but it really takes the WIOA idea of, you know, at least quarterly.

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And says, that’s not enough. Um, and a lot of times, our… WYOA contact for follow-up is really more transactional. It’s, hey, are you working? Yes, great, record.

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Um, but so the true idea in JAG is that follow-up service is a service.

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It’s a conversation. It’s not just a check-in and a record, um, kind of the outcome. It’s the goal of, are you working?

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Yes, well, how’s it going? Like, let’s talk through your boss and your coworkers, and do you think you’re getting enough hours? And it’s kind of like helping them ask themselves that question as a student is… is… you know, helping them determine, is there something more that they might need to be more successful? So it’s really taking that service

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Concept and making it an actual service activity. Um, the one thing I wanted to make sure that I did, uh, with this presentation was also ensure that there’s a lot of student voice somewhere in here.

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Um, and so I’m gonna… I’ve got a couple of success stories and a little video I want to share that’s a little bit over a minute.

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Um, but I think one of the key things, much like in the career association, so those leadership opportunities, but also having students have that voice, uh, student voice and choice. I’m a, like, I would go to my grave saying student voice and choice.

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Um, is opportunities to, you know, bring in field… bring in guest speakers that’s something they might be interested in. So even if no student in the class except for one is interested in becoming an auto mechanic. Like, well, let’s bring that guy in so he can at least talk to the one, but it creates the exposure for all of the others.

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So, just a couple of quick success stories here. Um, so the first one is my dear friend Gunnar, um, and you can read a little bit about Gunnar’s story here.

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Um, but obviously, he, you know, part of his, uh, story involves some, some very dark times.

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Doing, you know, drugs and some… and alcohol as kind of a coping mechanism.

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Uh, but the quote that we pulled out here is, JAG became my lifeline.

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Um, and for a student who’s sort of been through what he’s been through, to really be able to credit a program and a person.

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To doing that for him, uh, is incredible. Uh, he also was one of our student career association officers at the state level.

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And since he graduated recently, he and I have had several conversations because he is already on the road to starting a non-profit organization.

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That is really focused on universal design, um, for, uh, events.

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Um, so he saw kind of a need in the JAG space of making sure that events are accessible for people with disabilities.

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Um, and that has become his kind of, like, new mission project, and so we’re… Continuing to meet and brainstorm about ways that we can put together some, like, a framework of doing that, and trying to introduce them to some of the key partners.

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Uh, but as you can see, I mean, he’s 18. Like, literally has just graduated, uh, I think in the last week And he is, uh, going full tilt on… on his next plan. And it really is because of JAG.

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Uh, the next student story here is Micaiah. Micaiah is going to be our student career association officer president this upcoming school year.

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Um, and… and again, this one little paragraph of her story is not the whole story, as you might imagine.

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But she had, again, much like many of our WIOA students, an incredibly traumatic upbringing.

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Um, but she is… so resilient, um, and really, again, credits a lot of her success in high school to her JAG specialist, who became a coordinator.

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Um, but she is incredible, I think made history in her school. She also just graduated from Warsaw in Indiana, made history in her school for graduating summa cum laude Uh, with her associate’s degree, um, while also still working on her high school diploma, but no one had done that and had sort of met and achieved that level.

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Of academic preparedness, but she was not on that path until she came to JAG.

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Um, and so, I mean, she just is an incredible student.

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I would take her with me everywhere I go if I could, because she’s… she just… she nails it every time. She says all the… all the things about what JAG really did for her.

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Uh, so a couple of little metrics, right? We’ve got the success stories, and then we’ve got the successful outcomes. Um, again, certainly if you are a person who follows WYOA, there’s a lot of, uh.

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Parallels here in the outcomes that we are required to meet under the Department of Labor.

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And so you can really see, again, how JAG sort of aligns with that, but also how it knocks it out of the park.

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Um, in a couple of those, very specifically, employment, um, is a… is a huge one, because our students are incredibly prepared for jobs.

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Okay, I’m gonna end my big thing here with a quick little video, and Kim said earlier that it works, so… I’m going to hope that that is still true, and hopefully it’s not too loud. So, what is JAG?

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What is JAG? What is JAG? What is JAG? What is JAG? What is this Jack? What is Jack? What is Jack? What is Jack? What is Jack? Jag is opportunities that I never got.

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Nobody ever taught me how to write a resume, nobody taught me what business casual looked like, nobody, you know, I wasn’t experiencing these different job opportunities.

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We ran our little bubble of. You picked what your parents did, or something that maybe an aunt or uncle did, and that’s, you know, what you grew up to, because you were never exposed to other things, so… JAG is just an unlimited, you know, field of opportunities for students to learn so much more and have

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A leg up on competition in their own future. I think JAG is just a family overall.

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Um, I think there’s… When you meet a kid, you can tell if they’re a jag kid or not.

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These jackets are absolutely amazing, and I’m so proud of every single one of them, and… I’m just glad I get to be a part of their family.

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These two years have truly been a blessing, really. I’ve had so many opportunities and networking abilities to have throughout the program, and so many different places I’ve been able to see and people I’ve been able to meet, I want to say my most influential one was the National Student Leadership Academy in Washington, D.C. It was very inspirational to be there, see so many people from different states, different cultures.

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And it was overall just one of the best experiences I think I’ve ever had.

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You see them coming in, and they’re really shy, and they’re maybe taking a step back, um, they’re looking for somebody just to kind of take them in as their own.

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And it’s really cool to just watch them over the year. They slowly start doing hands-on things, they slowly get involved in the conversation that they wouldn’t have otherwise. A lot of these students, they tell me, I’m so glad that you put me in CDC, I’m so glad that you put me in these things.

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When I wouldn’t have done it myself, um, because you really see them shine and flourish, because it’s something that They wouldn’t have even thought of to put themselves in.

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Before JAG, I was honestly… I was debating what to do still. And honestly, and as a senior, that’s not a good thing, like… You gotta have at least an idea.

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So, and… but going through JAG, I have, especially coming to the end.

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I have found scholarships that will host, uh, the stuff I want to do.

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Uh, I have 3 plans on if something goes wrong, I can do this or that.

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And it is just crazy how much more prepared I am at the end of the year.

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Hopefully, in that, you were able to pick out, um, I shared Micaiah’s little story. She was also in the video, um, there.

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And I will just leave you, um, as kind of my last little slide here before we pause for any other questions, but, um.

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Just a little quote, again, about kind of the transformational effects of the program.

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But also, hopefully, you were able to get some ideas, too, in this about approaching your own work.

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Um, and how, you know, again, how important that is when you’re working with youth specifically, um, but also, you know, even that little nugget of how you connect with a student or an out-of-school youth, the ripple effects of that long-term are certainly seen in what we do, but also seen in what you do. So…

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That is my presentation in well under 30 minutes, so I will stop sharing, Kim.

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Um, and then if there are any questions, I see a few Again, I also see lots of my JAG people, um, in here.

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Um, okay, first question I see, um, from Robert about… Um, how students’ parents are involved, um, which is a really great question, um.

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You know, traditionally, um, you know, a lot of our students are sometimes being placed into these classes by their school counselors, and so sometimes they don’t even know what they’re getting into before they get there.

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Um, but in the really effective programs, it is a lot of great outreach between our specialists and the parents and saying, hey, you know, I know you saw this on your kid’s schedule, and you don’t know what it is, but here are the benefits, right? Here’s the access to the work-based learning, the access to field trips, and to that career pathway.

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Plan. And so it really is just kind of that, like, one-on-one conversation with those parents to help them understand that this is not It’s not a class that’s a punishment, it’s not a… you know, you’re not here because you’re, you know, a less than kind of kid, or something like that, but it’s really helping them understand that it’s an opportunity

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For advancement, um, really giving that kind of leg up on their peers who may not have Um, that, uh, opportunity otherwise or may not have families who, um, have been able to have those opportunities.

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Kim, did I miss any other ones?

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Okay.

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No, I don’t think he… I don’t think there were any other questions in the chat box. Um, Art did say… That they love seeing the realized growth from students, and it was some awesome success stories, so thank you for sharing that.

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Um, Brianna, I did have a question, and I apologize if you said this and I missed it, but For… to get into the JAG program, are there any eligibility criteria? I saw that you listed the barriers, but is it a requirement for, um, to get into the program?

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That’s a great question. Um, you know, so it… it sometimes depends a little bit on funding stream.

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Um, you know, obviously, if we’re utilizing WIOA funds, we really want to make sure that the students are sort of low income and have all those other WIOA barriers.

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Um, again, for our students that might be funded with our vocational rehabilitation funds, it varies specifically, they must have an IEP or a 504 plan verified by the school.

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Um, but otherwise, um. You know, the kind of goal of the program is to make sure that there are people in the school who are nominating the student, right? You know, if it’s a principal or a business teacher, or an English teacher or something who’s seen a student who might need a little bit of additional help, and then working with the guidance counselors to make sure that that happens.

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Um, but also, some of my, like, the best JAG kids we have are kids who are like, oh my gosh, my friend is in this, and it’s so cool.

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Right? They just want to be a part of something because they’ve seen the success in their, like, in their friends.

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Um, and so those are incredible opportunities where, you know, like, the peer magic has worked across the board. But there are some eligibility requirements, and again, it kind of depends on funding streams.

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Um, couple of other, like, questions. Uh, Devin says, can you speak to what differences, if any, you’ve seen in outcomes of the participants based on program models?

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Uh, so most interestingly, Devin. There… there really aren’t any differences.

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Um, we… we tend to look a lot at, you know, demographic differences.

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Uh, our programs are a pretty, uh, a variety of students, uh, boys and girls.

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Non-binary students, I mean, it’s kind of, we will enroll any kind of kid, um, and we do have some students who are incredibly low-income who are valedictorians and Salutatorians in their school, but also have other challenges.

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Um, not just that, you know, it’s not academic for them, it’s some of those other things.

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Um, our students who are vocational rehabilitation funded, those with IEPs and 504s, are, uh, outperforming, um, you know, school schools where they don’t have JAG, essentially, so we’re kind of looking at the apples to apples. If you do have JAG and if you don’t have JAG, and those students are way outperforming.

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Um, I think the same is true, um, across the board for our minority students Um, you know, I mean, in some of our schools that are 100% African American students.

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100% JAG graduation rate, and that is not true of the rest of their peers in those schools, so it really is… It’s the programming.

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Um, and it’s the person teaching it who kind of sees, like, what are all the things we need to triage for that student.

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Um, and also to Latoya’s question, the answer is yes, you could do JAG and Pre-ETS at the same time. Um, that is the… an easy thing. Um… Sabra, will… I think the metrics will come in the… Uh, because they’re in that slide deck, they’ll come in the deck to you on Friday.

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Um, but they are generically graduation rates, um. Employment, full-time employment, uh, post-secondary education, so that could be credentials, it could be two-year, four-year.

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Um, there’s military, um, options as well, or a combination of all those things.

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No, you’re good.

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Um, and then I love this question, and Kim, feel free to shut me… cut me off if I… need to get the little… Uh, Laura’s question, how involved are the employers with future employment for those that have completed the JAG program?

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Uh, great question, um, and I probably could even pitch to some of my friends from Indiana who are on the call who… who may be even better at speaking to that than I am. Um, but… you know, that connection piece, I think, between working with, like, our staff.

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And saying, hey, here are these kids who really get it.

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Right? They have that work ethic, and they understand how important it is to show up on time, so they really understand all those professional-level skills.

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Um, you know, hey, employer X, um, so Honda Manufacturing, or, I mean, whatever the case is, would you be willing to talk to these kids? Would you be willing to interview them?

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Can you host them? And then, can you hire them? Um, and in fact, I was at a meeting the other day, and the gentleman from Jasper Engines, which is a pretty large, you know, manufacturing company here in southern Indiana.

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Has hired 50 kids. Um, so it’s certainly not all, but they have just one small little community, and they’ve hired 50 JAG students over the course of the last couple years, so… There is a lot of buy-in from employers, including small, uh, small businesses, too.

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The key is making sure that there’s a match between student interests.

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Um, and, you know, work-based learning or other job placement, because placing a kid in a job they don’t want to do is a surefire way to have them quit immediately.

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Um, so it… some of that exposure and, um. You know, helping them see all the opportunities is really key.

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Um… let’s see… Let’s see here… Okay.

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I think there’s one more question, uh, from Art, and Art asks, are there shared funding sources between workforce schools, uh, VR, like, what’s that funding?

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Structure looked like.

00:32:46.000 –> 00:32:52.000

Yep, great question. Um, in our state, currently, we have, um.

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You know, at the state level, I think there are four different funding streams, so we use WIOA, we use the VR pre-employment transition services dollars.

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Um, we have some limited, uh, state funding, uh, so state appropriation, and then we also use some TNF dollars as been… that was kind of our newest.

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Funding stream. Um, we are working towards, uh, school contributions, which I’m sure in other places is as hard as it is in Indiana, because school budgets are very tight.

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Um, we just did a whole bunch of other things, like property tax, and it’s gonna cause some ripples.

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Um, but, I mean, that investment from schools, whether it’s utilizing their title dollars or some other funds, is key to helping ensure that there’s some buy-in and some, like, championship of the program in a school.

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Um, but I know in lots of other JAG states, they are also funded very similarly with philanthropic dollars, or, you know, employer contributions you know, it really… that sort of blending and braiding of all the different funding streams is what makes it successful, because then it creates

00:33:56.000 –> 00:34:11.000

Differed opportunities to fund work-based learning with this pot of funding, or… Um, you know, again, VR funding to help us really provide some more, like, intensive-level services for the students with disabilities.

00:34:11.000 –> 00:34:17.000

That they may not otherwise receive, um, in school, so… Lots of different, uh.

00:34:17.000 –> 00:34:21.000

Models for how to utilize those funds.

00:34:21.000 –> 00:34:45.000

Awesome. Well, Brianna, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be with her… be with us here today, and just share information on jobs for American grads and all of the wonderful, wonderful work you’re doing. Thank you all for being here with us on our May edition of 30 Minutes of Excellence Again, you will get this recording along with the presentation. You’ll get that in your emails.

00:34:45.000 –> 00:34:49.000

Um, by the end of the week. So, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Wednesday, and I look forward to seeing you all very soon.

00:34:49.000 –> 00:34:58.000

Thanks