In Pennsylvania, the landscape of education and employment is undergoing a transformation, where the traditional pathways to career success are being redefined. At the heart of this shift is Career and Technical Education (CTE), enabling innovation for students navigating the complexities of the modern job market. CTE programs stand as a bridge between ambition and opportunity, offering learners the tools and skills necessary to thrive in industries pivotal to the state’s economic growth and sustainability. 

CTE: Building Tomorrow’s Skilled Workforce

In the Keystone state, data from the Association for Career & Technical Education reveal an economic dilemma: 53% of available jobs demand more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year degree. However, only 42% of the workforce possesses this level of education. This discrepancy offers both a challenge and a prospect for Career and Technical Education (CTE) initiatives to fill the void. CTE programs in Pennsylvania are strategically designed to address this gap, focusing on key industries such as food processing & manufacturing, energy production & transition, plastics & chemicals, and robotics & AI. These areas are essential for the economic advancement and sustainability of the state, positioning CTE as the critical foundation for cultivating skilled experts poised for innovation and success.

Earnings, Participation, and Career Readiness

In the 2021-22 academic period, Pennsylvania saw significant enrollment numbers in Career and Technical Education (CTE) with 60,570 secondary and 58,465 postsecondary students engaging in these programs. CTE goes beyond preparation for immediate employment, paving the way for enduring career success. Remarkably, students concentrated in CTE programs in Pennsylvania celebrated a graduation rate of 94.7%, surpassing the general student population’s rate of 87%. This statistic illustrates CTE’s role in fostering higher educational achievements. Participants in CTE graduate at elevated rates and acquire credentials recognized across industries, laying a solid groundwork for their future professional endeavors

The Case for Greater Investment in CTE

While the achievements are noteworthy, there is a clear and urgent need to boost funding for Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. It’s essential that every student, particularly those from traditionally marginalized communities, gains access to these critical learning paths to secure the future of Pennsylvania’s labor force and its economic vitality. The support for CTE is undeniable with the Federal Perkins CTE funding for the fiscal year 2023 allocated to Pennsylvania being $50 million. The growing demand and the immense potential for expansion call for increased financial backing. The evolution of CTE in Pennsylvania represents a path filled with potential, obstacles, and hope. Amplifying the investment in these initiatives promises to prepare all students with the necessary competencies to excel in a dynamic and competitive employment landscape.

The Future Ready Curriculum: Shaping Pennsylvania’s CTE Landscape

As Pennsylvania works to close the gap in skills by embracing Career and Technical Education (CTE), incorporating advanced tools such as the Future Ready Curriculum proves crucial. Find Your Grind, designed to support CTE initiatives, meets the changing needs of younger generations like Gen Alpha and Gen Z by offering bite-sized learning and game-like experiences, which greatly involve students in discovering career options and building vital skills for the future. This strategy enriches the CTE journey and guarantees students are ready for the shifting job landscape. The Future Ready Curriculum plays a significant role in the growth of CTE programs throughout Pennsylvania, making Find Your Grind a pivotal partner in expanding CTE programs across Pennsylvania.

Watch the Future Ready Curriculum Video

Are you an educator or administrator & want to learn more about how Find Your Grind enhances your CTE program? Schedule your personalized demo now.

In California, as in many parts of the United States, there exists a critical gap in financial literacy education within the school system. Many students graduate without the essential skills needed to manage their finances effectively. This deficiency arises from various factors, including curriculum priorities, lack of professional development, and resource constraints. Addressing this issue demands a concerted effort to ensure that students receive the necessary knowledge and skills to make informed financial decisions.

A recent press release from the California Department of Education sheds light on several critical issues identified within the state’s education system. It exposes a lack of personal finance education for today’s youth, indicating limited exposure to comprehensive personal finance education for high school students. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond spoke at a recent Personal Finance Summit and emphasized the pressing need to address these challenges. Assembly Bill 2927 is gaining traction and highlights the absence of mandatory personal finance education in the California high school curriculum. This leads to a negative impact on students’ financial literacy and their preparedness for managing finances in adulthood. 

Legislative Actions to Revolutionize Financial Literacy

The bill outlines a one-semester personal finance course, ensuring that high school students receive essential financial literacy education. Also proposed is the deployment of a Personal Finance Task Force that guides the implementation of personal finance education across schools statewide. The California Department of Education has outlined ways to offer essential support to educators, including providing teacher stipends and professional development opportunities. The bill outlines a plan that fosters an entrepreneurial mindset among students and provides educators with valuable resources to facilitate comprehensive entrepreneurship education and skill development in the classroom.

Exceeding Expectations with the Future Ready Curriculum

Integrating the Future Ready Curriculum by Find Your Grind into high schools across California presents an opportunity to exceed the goals outlined in Assembly Bill 2927. This curriculum, designed with a lifestyle-first approach, goes beyond traditional financial literacy by combining self-discovery, career exploration, and 21st-century skill development. This holistic approach ensures that students are financially literate and equipped with the knowledge and skills to navigate career and college pathways.

Find Your Grind focuses on financial fundamentals such as budgeting, cost analysis, and investment strategies, and aligns with the state’s requirement for a mandatory one-semester personal finance course. The platform prepares students for successful financial management and informed decision-making in adulthood by teaching them to understand the economic implications of their lifestyle choices.

Future Ready Educators Guiding Students Towards Financial Success

A California Personal Finance Task Force opens the doors for enrollment in the Future Ready Educators Professional Development Program. This program is tailored to empower educators with innovative teaching strategies and the latest educational tools, enabling them to deliver engaging and effective financial literacy education. Through professional learning services that blend Future Ready learning frameworks and financial literacy, educators can foster an environment that encourages students to explore their financial attitudes, understand their strengths, and recognize the economic value of their skills and interests.

Encouraging an entrepreneurial mindset among students is another key aspect of the Future Ready Curriculum. The Find Your Grind platform encourages students to apply their financial knowledge in real-world settings, fostering innovation, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. This prepares students to be savvy financial managers and forward-thinking entrepreneurs who can contribute to the growth and diversity of the economy.

Are you an educator or administrator & want to learn more? Schedule your personalized demo now.

The Licking County Regional Educational Service Center (Licking Regional ESC) has partnered with Find Your Grind to launch a professional development day aimed at transforming the approach to career readiness. This collaboration originates from a deliberate vetting process by the Licking Regional ESC, which supports numerous districts. The objective is to enhance collaboration among these districts and secure their commitment to connect students with local careers and opportunities. This initiative reflects a strategic effort to share innovative teaching strategies and build a community of Future Ready Educators dedicated to preparing students for the future. 

The Licking Regional ESC mission is to, “To provide leadership and service to meet the individual and collective needs of Licking County Schools so that the quality of educational experiences for children is enhanced and improved.” They aim to never force solutions onto their district but to support them and get their input and authentic buy-in.

Charting a New Path: Lifestyle-First Learning

The partnership began when Dale Dickson, Director, Licking Regional ESC, met Tyler Harrington, Account Executive, Find Your Grind at the OESCA conference. Tyler gave a presentation that covered how Montgomery County ESC and Find Your Grind announced a strategic 3-year collaboration to bring Find Your Grind’s innovative Future Ready Curriculum and personalized exploration experience to thousands of students in the Dayton metropolitan area.

For far too long, we’ve asked students, “What do you want to be when you grow up”’ Lifestyles become the focus of Find Your Grind, with the students understanding who they are, and what kind of lifestyle they want to lead. I was intrigued by that.

– Dale Dickson, Director, Licking Regional ESC

Through interactions with the Find Your Grind curriculum, Dale realized that the longstanding educational question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ no longer served its intended purpose. Find Your Grind shifts the focus to lifestyles, helping students understand who they are and what kind of lifestyle they want.

A Day of Transformative Learning

Jessa Clark, a freshman English teacher, attended the Licking County Regional ESC’s professional development day with her team. Jessa and her colleagues were pleasantly surprised. The Find Your Grind program offered engaging ideas that resonated with Jessa’s educational values. She saw the program’s potential to be seamlessly integrated into her curriculum, empowering students to explore lifestyles, develop essential skills, and ultimately chart their futures. The day even sparked a collaborative brainstorming session among the teachers, Jessa reflects, “We were just doing some lessons, trying to explore how we can integrate those ideas into our classrooms to assist students in becoming more future-ready.”

“…focus on the lifestyle component before you focus on the career – that to me was kind of eye-opening because what I currently do is very much career first.”

– Brian Ledford, Math and Financial Literacy Teacher, Licking Valley High School

Brian Ledford, a Math and Financial Literacy Teacher at Licking Valley High School, shared his introduction to Find Your Grind. He expressed, “We didn’t really know much about Find Your Grind, and now, having gone through some training on it, to focus on the lifestyle component before you focus on the career – that to me was kind of eye-opening because what I currently do is very much career first.” Brian elaborated on how the curriculum empowers students to develop transferable skills, “What can I do to improve them? What skills am I not good at and, then as they get older, maybe they do change careers. Maybe they stay on the same path. Those skills are going to help them navigate that as they get older.”

Dale stressed the importance of preparing students for the evolving job market, especially with the burgeoning presence of manufacturing and various industries in their area. He emphasized, “With the growth of manufacturing and many other businesses coming to our area, it’s so vitally important to build on workforce development for our students.” Additionally, Dale discussed his insights gleaned from utilizing Find Your Grind. He highlighted the platform’s capability to collect valuable data on student learning within the curriculum. “One of the most intriguing pieces of Find Your Grind is being able to gather proper data about what our students are learning within the curriculum so that we can understand those subgroups of students to better match with the businesses in our area of the state,” he explained. 

To gain a deeper understanding of these transformative learning strategies, hear directly from the Future Ready Educators who attended this event.

Envisioning the Future Together

This spring, the Licking Regional ESC and Find Your Grind are launching a collaborative pilot program to explore innovative approaches to career readiness. The program will involve several districts and aims to assess a district-wide partnership’s effectiveness for the upcoming school year. The initiative brings together educators from diverse districts with a common goal: to ensure students are prepared for success in the job market. By working together, districts can share best practices, optimize resources, and develop a more cohesive approach to career planning and development for their students.

Are you a Service Agency, District, or School Champion of Change and are passionate about wanting to support your educators and students? Book an appointment to share your unique needs, and we can support you in cultivating a transformative educational experience for your educators and students. Let’s embark on this journey together, Schedule your appointment now!

TGR Foundation, a charitable organization established by Tiger Woods, is committed to inspiring students to pursue their passions through educational opportunities. It has revolutionized after-school learning by prioritizing engaging, practical STEM activities and hands-on experiential learning at the TGR Learning Lab. TGR Foundation’s mission is to empower students to pursue their passions through education. They have transformed after-school learning for students by focusing on immersive, hands-on STEM and experiential classes. As TGR Foundation’s main focus for students is developing a growth mindset and career preparedness, a partnership with Find Your Grind was a natural fit.

Find Your Grind’s approach to career exploration and self-discovery perfectly aligns with TGR Foundation’s mission, creating a synergy that enhances the educational experience. Through the Future Ready Curriculum, students learn a lifestyle-first approach with access to mentor resources, career guidance, and personalized learning paths that encourage young minds to explore their interests and understand their potential, revealing unique pathways to success.

The partnership reveals success stories of students who have benefitted from the combined efforts of TGR Foundation and Find Your Grind. These narratives are testaments to the impact of the Future Ready Curriculum, serving as sources of inspiration and motivation for students, educators, and supporters of educational innovation. Let’s dive into these remarkable young individuals’ journeys, aspirations, and achievements, whose experiences underscore the transformative power of education and self-discovery.

The Versatile Creator

“[Find Your Grind] has helped push me to not only collaborate with different peers but also to understand each other and learn more about teamwork.”

Pearl’s journey through Find Your Grind’s dynamic ecosystem reveals a spanning interest in multimedia and cooking classes, showcasing a rich blend of creativity, analytical thinking, and competitive spirit. Taking the Lifestyle Assessment revealed her top three lifestyles—Creator, Analyzer, and Competitor—reflecting a multifaceted approach to learning and personal development. What makes her experience particularly captivating is the gamified nature of Find Your Grind, likened to the immersive worlds of video games, which have made education enjoyable and profoundly effective for all learners. Beyond the fun and engagement, Find Your Grind serves as a conduit for collaboration, students to forge meaningful connections with peers, and fostering teamwork and mutual understanding in ways that traditional school electives could not. The commitment to Find Your Grind has catalyzed significant personal growth, notably in time management and self-discovery, empowering Pearl to explore a future in the arts and marketing.

The Aspiring Cinematographer

“I actually took a class on video editing since that was something [Find Your Grind] recommended me to learn how to do in order to pursue my career.”

Brandyn embarked on an educational voyage that broadened perspectives on potential career paths and aligned passions with practical goals. Brandyn’s exploration through Find Your Grind revealed diverse career exploration from the unexpected allure of hairstyling to the dynamic fields of cinematography and videography. The expansive mentor library revealed insights from Shelby Parks, a freelancer with an impressive portfolio including work for Pepsi and Skechers, who served as a pivotal inspiration for Brandyn, igniting a drive to pursue freelance cinematography. This journey of self-discovery was further enriched by engaging in multimedia classes at the TGR Learning Lab. Find Your Grind’s personalized approach, which encourages learners to reflect on their interests and lifestyle preferences before guiding them toward suitable careers helped Brandyn identify a passion for cinematography.

A Personalized Learning Journey

“I like how it’s set up, because it’s pretty simple. You can see the salary, the qualifications, the location, the hours, pretty much some of the basic necessities for the job that you want right at hand.”

In a walkthrough by Brandyn, the Find Your Grind platform comes to life as an intuitive and personalized educational tool. Upon logging in, users are greeted warmly, immediately immersing them into an environment where their journey and preferences take center stage. Key features like mentors, portfolios, and a user-specific notebook are highlighted, offering a holistic approach to career exploration and self-discovery. Brandyn draws attention to the platform’s dynamic elements, such as recommended careers, mentors, and skills, alongside a unique badge system that tracks and encourages progress. The ability to filter careers by various criteria—including lifestyle, which Brandon personally values—underscores the platform’s commitment to aligning professional paths with individual preferences. Find Your Grind’s flexible user-driven platform details course offerings with actionable learning steps and the opportunity to request additional content. Brandyn’s narrative showcases a tool that facilitates the exploration of diverse career options and grows with its users, encouraging them to delve deeper into their interests and potential career pathways while providing a comprehensive snapshot of their personal development journey.

A New Era of Education

The Find Your Grind + TGR Foundation partnership illuminates paths for students to discover and pursue their passions while reinforcing the essential role of personalized, engaging education in shaping future leaders. Through their stories, we see the embodiment of determination, creativity, and the relentless pursuit of personal growth, fostered within an environment that values and nurtures potential. 

Are you an educator or administrator & want to learn more? Schedule your personalized demo now.