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Connecting Careers to the Classroom through Mentorship

Session 3
Maya Heiland, Adam Durant, Melissa Kurman — University City Science Center, FirstHand

When exploring the best ways to “engage students in relevant and meaningful experiences that connect to real world skills and careers” the best answer would be to give them direct access to those careers. Initiatives like US2020 have put a national focus on using mentorship to strengthen the school to STEM career pipeline, and the ability to connect youth to careers should quickly become accessible to all. The reality of connecting school or youth serving organizations to business partnerships can be met with a lot of red tape and missed opportunities.

By following along the journey of FirstHand's mentorship model, participants will get the chance take inventory of their goals and objectives for connecting youth to STEM careers, explore common barriers and potential solutions, and highlight opportunities that can be used to create an innovative and sustainable program.

Conversational Practice

Teams will be using personal learning scenarios and designing components of mentorship into them. Yes, we'll be using lots of post-its and markers. Participants, regardless of which side of the mentor spectrum they fall, will be identifying skills and careers for those particular scenarios and then discussing ways to connect them to the world at large. We'll be using a few protocols from Project Zero to guide conversations.

Conversation Links

Presenter Profiles

Adam Durant
Adam Durant
FirstHand (University City Science Center)
Melissa Kurman
Melissa Kurman
FirstHand - University City Science Center
Maya Heiland
Maya Heiland
University City Science Center, FirstHand

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