Educators in Navasota Independent School District's (NISD) Career and Technology curriculum program will soon offer WIN Learning’sPersonalized Career Readiness System to its middle and high school students.
The program was first introduced in March when representatives from NISD, the City of Navasota and the Navasota/Grimes County Chamber of Commerce hosted a meeting with local stakeholders to discuss workforce development and ways to educate students and expose them to real world projects to help prepare them for local job opportunities.
“Here in Navasota we realize students must acquire increasingly complex skills for both 21st century jobs and postsecondary education ventures,” said Rory Gesch, superintendent of Navasota schools. “We know that career technical-education pathways need to be as rigorous and skill-intensive as traditional college-prep pathways because student are relying on both sets of skills to get to college and beyond. The WIN Learning system will help us deliver highly-prepared students to both the general workforce and college campuses.”
The WIN Learning Personalized Career Readiness System is based on the WIN Educonomy Model – an intersection between education and local and regional economies where data on job markets helps students understand employability, foundational and social skills within the context of future careers. This real-world focus helps determine the personalized selection of coursework and other experiences in high school that will lead students to their desired careers, either directly after graduation or following further training and/or completing their college education.
The research-based Career-Driven Education model offers a three-pronged approach to prepare students for today’s global economic opportunities and challenges. With the career exploration system WIN Strategic Compass®, students can analyze current and projected labor market data to reveal career pathways. The program’s Initial Skills Review™ measures individual career readiness and skill development gaps, which leads to the WIN Career Readiness® Courseware, offering direct, contextual instruction through applied academics for workplace skill mastery.
The system also includes the recently launched WIN Soft Skills Series®, a program which builds skills mastery around the behavioral, attitudinal, social, and readiness skills employers and post-secondary programs demand. WIN Soft Skills will provide Navasota ISD educators with a curricular framework to teach their middle and high school students foundational behaviors such as conveying professionalism, communicating effectively, promoting teamwork and collaboration, thinking critically and solving problems. All attitudinal skills addressed in the courseware are revealed within the context of the workplace, to provide relevancy to the learning experience.
Navasota ISD will begin its implementation in September by having Career and Technology Education Program students complete the Initial Skills Review. In 2014, all middle and high school students will begin using the Career Readiness and Soft Skills direct instruction courseware to advance basic workplace and college readiness skills.
