 Hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. I'm Mimi Lufkin, CEO of America at the National Alliance for Partnerships and Equity, and I have the great pleasure of getting to facilitate or moderate today's panel. And I'm mostly interested in hearing from the panelists myself, so it's my intention here to get on to the Q&A part of this as quickly as possible. But before we begin, what I'd like to do is to go ahead and have each of our panelists introduce themselves, if they would, where they are from, the role they play in the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program, and maybe they could tell us one thing in one sentence that you love the most about the youth apprenticeship work that you're doing. All right, so I'm going to start with Sonya. Why don't we start with you? Good afternoon. I'm Sonya Addison-Stewart, and I'm the Career and Technical Education Director for Berkeley County School District, and I work with the apprenticeship program as far as encouraging students to participate and also, you know, creating a seamless pathway between our programs and opportunities that the students have in the youth apprenticeship program. You said one thing I love about the apprenticeship program. One thing I love about it is that, you know, I was on a panel earlier and I've seen the panels of the students to participate in the apprenticeship program. It's just the growth and development that I see in these students, how they have just grasped the skills that our employers are desperately saying that they need to see. And so to see these students actually practicing and practicing effective communication and understanding those work and life skills is gratifying to me. Thank you Sonya. Mark, how about you? Good afternoon everybody. My name is Mark Blacklock. I work for Dorchester School District 2, the Career and Technology Coordinator. And like Miss Stewart, I work with recruiting kids for the youth apprenticeship program. And I think the biggest thing for me is just the quite honestly the surprise that a lot of kids have of how great the program is, you know, even their parents and the opportunity they're provided. And then as it transitions into the program, just all the different skill sets that they learn, soft skills, technical skills, and how prepared they are once they complete the program for direct employment, along with all the, you know, benefits of, you know, getting potentially some college paid for and some, you know, work experience and different things. I think overall it's just a great opportunity. And yeah, I just enjoy working with it in the students. Great. Thanks Mark. Well, jump to Robert next. Hello everyone. My name is Robert Elliott and I'm the Dean of Manufacturing and Maintenance at Trident Technical College. Within my division, as far as apprenticeships are concerned, I have industrial mechanics, air conditioner, refrigeration, welding, automotive technology and machine tool technology. So a good number of apprenticeships within my division. And one, I would say one thing that I really enjoy about just being involved in this program is just providing that exposure and opportunity to students that wouldn't ordinarily have this opportunity. A lot of students aren't four year college bound. And to be able to give these students these skills to go into the workforce, I think it's a great, it's awesome program. Thanks, Robert. Thank you. Let's jump to Richard. Good afternoon. I'm Richard Gordon, Executive Director of CTE with Charleston County School District. You know, they stole my thunder a little bit. I love all those things about the apprenticeship opportunities we give our kids and watching them succeed. I think my favorite part about apprenticeships is the recognition ceremony at the end of the year. When you see the students go up on the stage, their families are there, their business partners are there, tried in technical colleges there. And it really feels like a family event. And we're all part of the same team to see young adults succeed and whatever that looks like. You know, many of these students go into the workforce, but many go to the two year schools, technical schools and some go to four year schools as well. So there are multiple exit ramps on this highway. But by far, I mean, that recognition award ceremony is fantastic. And that's my favorite thing about the apprenticeship program. Great. Thanks, Richard. And Trisha. Yeah, hi. I'm Trish Weig, I'm the Director of School Counseling at Cambay High School. And so you guys took everything I was going to say. But my favorite part truly is seeing the excitement on the kids faces and the parents faces, especially when they come in in the summer and they know they're now going to be a used apprentice and working on that schedule and just talking about, you know, their career goal and how it's going to match and just seeing that piece of it. That's that's probably the most exciting part. Great. Thanks, Trisha. Well, what I love the best is the fact that that all of you talked about the fact that it's really about the transformation that happens for your students. And that's the focus of your efforts. And I know that today's presentation or the panel title for today is creating seamless pathways to credentials and careers, aligning K-12 and higher education systems through youth apprenticeship. So I have some questions I want to talk to you about a variety of groups of people who are impacted by this work and how how you play a role in either a leadership role in that or a facilitator of those of those relationships and the impact that that work has on your own institution. And also, you know, whether it's students, parents, faculty, even systems within your institution. So I'm going to start, Robert, with you first. I like to think about the youth apprenticeship program as though it's a three-legged stool and that there are there are three partners in this work, certainly the high school districts that you work with on Friday Tech is a very is really, you know, the center of that three-legged stool. And of course, the employers that you're working with as well. What I want to know is how do you balance and manage the relationships between your high school partners, your employer partners? And how has this work been a benefit to the college and what challenges has it brought? And how have you overcome those challenges? So that's about three or four questions all loaded in there. But I'm hoping that you can think about that holistically and approach the answers to some of those as we go along. Okay. Well, first, it begins with effective communication. What effect effective communication between the districts, the college and the employers, you know, this program wouldn't have been would not have been as a success as it is from an from an educator point of view. Basically, the two supporting offices that's that that basically I report to, they assist us from the school district side. And then from the employer side. So we go, they're like the hub in the wheel for for us. Any questions I may have, or any communication from the industry comes through the office of school through the office of apprenticeships and business partnerships for industry. And then for the districts is for the school and community initiatives office. So as the educator side, you know, they communicate a lot with us about what the needs are for its industry, as well as the districts. And that's that's the balance, I think, that works between everyone, you know, that effective communication. And you said three legged stool. And critical to success. Um, what are some of the challenges that you've experienced and and how, you know, how have you overcome those? Well, some of the challenges in the beginning was scheduling, trying to schedule the students high school schedules along with the college schedules. But that has since been hired out and and pretty much flows very smoothly right now. In the beginning, that's where it was. But other than that, there's really, it's not much of a challenge out there for any student looking to get into this program. And you spoke about benefits. I think the greatest benefit is that the college has the opportunity to work closer with the school districts and industry partners, all all of us working closely together to benefit these students to impact our community. I feel before the apprenticeship program, there was a little disconnect between I think the technical studies and some of the school districts. The technical side, we already had a relationship with our industry partners, but didn't really have that strong partnership with the schools, the school districts. And now that we started the apprenticeship, it's like we're all basically communicating together, coming up with new initiatives, new programs to get these students out there, getting them exposed to two different career sets that are available. And you said overcome challenges. That was the last one I believe. Basically, I said it was it was just scheduling. And I think we are pretty much down now. So now it's just the program just runs pretty much seamlessly and smoothly. That's great. Great. Thanks, Robert. Richard, I'm going to jump to you next. I want I want to sort of play off something that Robert mentioned, which was how the startup of this the youth apprenticeship work has impacted sounds like it's impacted college in terms of growing new programs and new initiatives and sort of the spin off that have occurred from that work. I'm curious how becoming a partner in in the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program has impacted even systems in your district or programs as well. And has the experience of doing this work caused you to look differently at the way you operate other CTE programs in the district? What what's sort of been the spillover of the this effort? Well, it has significantly impacted the systems. I think regionally and specifically also in Charleston County School District as well. As you can imagine the youth apprenticeship model or that program is you can say the pinnacle of what work based learning experiences can be. You know, if you look at the continuum of career awareness when the kids start an elementary school, maybe they have guest speakers or a job shadowing event, maybe some career fairs, even elementary into middle school summer career camps is as popular where kids get from career awareness to exploration. And then finally in high school, we look at career preparation. They're taking CTE classes. There are some clinical experiences, internships, whether they're during the school or summer, or of course, apprenticeships like the youth apprenticeship model that we have. It really gave us a mindset as to we're going to begin this whole process with the end in mind. So we wanted a student to participate in youth apprenticeship. What does that look like as the child articulates from kindergarten all the way through high school and even articulate to technical school as well. And to do that, we have to provide access and opportunity. And I'll go back to that as many times as I can. And I know Robert talked a little bit about that is do all the students have access to these high impact career clusters across all of the, you know, not just manufacturing, but health science and STEM, you know, and transportation and logistics. And there's many more, you know, but it starts with can kids access those opportunities? And do they have that opportunity to take that course work and to participate? So really how does we think or just actually look in the mirror and say, what are we doing? And how can we do it differently and more effectively? Then when we noticed that we can do it better, then we put we implemented a whole bunch of changes in the district that I believe are better for, you know, for the betterment of students for their families and for the community, like our career centers, like CTE, completed programs, certification programs that align with those apprenticeships. So it really changed a lot about what career readiness, college readiness, or like I just like to say, future readiness looks like for all of our students, but some all of our students have a future ready to go college or career, you know, they're all going to get to that point of I got to get a job, I have to earn a living, you know, so how do we get that to that point and whatever that looks like. So that would really help this change, not just these high impact clusters, but all of our career buses throughout Charleston County. Sounds like it's been more than just a spill over. It sounds like it's really shifted and changed the way that you're looking at career and technical education and the and career development. For you to be talking about work with, you know, kindergarten K through 20, you know, that's that's a different mindset about how these kinds of programs can have that impact. I'm going to jump next to Sonya and ask Sonya, how are these programs impacted your students? What are the benefits that students experience and and how also have has those benefits affected their families? Have you seen things like improved academic performance, persistence, graduation, transition to post-secondary education, employment, wage earnings, anything on that spectrum? How, you know, we talked, we talked a little bit about the partnership impact. We've talked about how this work has impacted systems. In your perspective Sonya, how is this work impacting your students? I think the Youth Apprenticeship Program is impacting our students because, as Rich said, it's giving them access to opportunities that are in high demand. Many times students may have an interest and, you know, just don't have the knowledge or the way to get there. But giving them information about the Youth Apprenticeship Program where they could start in high school, where they still have a strong support system there to help guide them through that, would help lead them to that particular lifelong goal that they may have. I think for our students that participate in the apprenticeship program, definitely a seamless transition. They have so much support within the Youth Apprenticeship Program. Everyone that works in that program really supports students. And that is key for students to continue on. And the students that typically don't have access to certain programs or may not participate in certain programs is because they don't have that support. And I think in the Youth Apprenticeship Program, they do have that. So they've gained that, they've gained access to careers. And we also find out that the skills, again, I spoke about this earlier, the skills that the students develop that are youth apprenticeship, that are youth apprentices are phenomenal. You know, when you hear them speak, when you hear them speak about their growth in regards to like managing their time. These are skills some adults don't really have at this particular time. You know, learning how to communicate, working with others as a team. Those are skills that are so very much needed in our students today. And the Youth Apprenticeship Program definitely helps our students to develop those skills. So I think all of these things lead to lifelong success to the in their future goals. So it really helps to build a foundation for our students to help propel them to where they need to be. I think I want to become a youth apprentice. Sounds like sounds like great things for anybody. I'm going to jump to Mark. You know, we look at this from a systemic perspective and now showing you comments about student impact. Mark, can you tell me a little bit about how being involved in the Youth Apprenticeship work has impacted your relationships with employers? And how have employers affected the quality of your CTE programs? Do they have a, you know, the back and forth about the input and relationship to improving CTE programs at your district? Excuse me. Have employers been involved at all in developing educator skills? Learning more about the industry? Any kind of professional development opportunities? And of course, how do employers engage with students and support students to ensure their success? So if you think about this in terms of the employers you engage with, what do you think happened or how has this impacted them? Sure. I think, you know, from the onset, it strengthened our partnerships with our local businesses and industries. No doubt. You have these partnerships that you've already developed district-wide, school-wide, you know, throughout the region and, you know, when those folks are able to come in, albeit not so much recently due to, you know, our pandemic situation, but even through a virtual platform and stuff and really start engaging our students early on. Mr. Gordon hit on it perfectly when he mentioned, you know, the K through 12 kind of initiative that we have. You know, you have your elementary students really just becoming aware, your middle school students really trying to explore and then at the high school level when we implement these different programs to work-based learning, especially the youth apprenticeship program, that's, you know, you're hoping that you've got a student that's been exposed and been interested in a particular pathway for their entire educational career. And if you've got these business partners that's been around and they've had students that have come through the program, they've learned just as much as we have as far as, you know, how to tweak certain things and, you know, how to develop, you know, the way that they interact with the students, but, you know, it's just really exciting to see that kind of grow and, you know, you mentioned, as far as, you know, professional development, not necessarily on a technical kind of official global effort, but you do see teachers and programs reaching out to those partners, especially ones that are new, that have come in and maybe weren't, you know, a business partner that we had, you know, for a long-standing relationship, but a new partner that joined because they had, you know, they were interested in becoming a part of the apprenticeship program and working with our teachers to help kind of cultivate and fine-tune some of the skill sets that we teach in our courses. Of course, we have our state standards that we're going to hit and that we're going to, you know, model our course after, but especially when you talk about regional needs and things that employers are looking for in our region, that's potentially different all across the country and so when they can come into our classrooms and really have a good dialogue and communicate with our teachers about what they're looking for when the students get to, you know, graduate or get involved in the youth apprenticeship program or any type of work-based learning, that's really powerful because now we've really tapped into what industry needs and we're trying our best to be able to implement that in our classroom and, you know, when it comes to the employers kind of reinforcing student success, I think, you know, like Mr. Elliott said at the beginning, that communication is key from the beginning. If we can have clear communication and expectations all the way through the program, now we've at least created that dialogue that if a student does start to struggle or has challenges, you know, we have a comfortable dialogue with our partner to be able to discuss that and vice versa and, you know, you have great mentorships that kind of come out of this too if a student isn't necessarily involved in an apprenticeship, you know, you can have these business partners become mentors for other students in our buildings, you know, it just, it opens up really, again, going back to what Mr. Gordon said, just that plethora of work-based learning that we always try to provide all students, no matter what their circumstance, no matter what the career pathway is, there's something out there for every student at quite honestly at every grade level and, you know, when you just have that open line of communication and you're building those relationships, you're supporting your students, you know, the great things can happen out of that and we've just been very grateful and, I guess to some degree, very lucky and, you know, that we've got such great partners and great students in the program, but yeah, I mean, you know, it's a give and take but, you know, in the end we just want our students to have the best opportunity possible and we've just been, I feel like we've been very successful with that. That's great, I'm sure there's, you know, the benefits of this work is probably as much for you all and your students and the employers benefit from it as well. I would imagine, and Mark, you can tell me if I'm accurate about this, but that having youth apprentices in some of these companies and businesses has changed the workplace, has changed the the relationships that employers are having with young people and I'm kind of curious as a quick follow-up, was there ever any pushback from the beginning when the program first started from employers about, I don't want these people in like, you know, just sort of, well, I think, you know, there's again setting aside the whole pandemic and the, you know, the obvious concern there, I think a lot of it had to do with, you know, when you, when students are going through the process and getting interviewed by our counselors and starting the whole process, soft skills has always come up in every conversation we've ever had with, with industry and business partners, you know, are you guys teaching soft skills? Do you have a curriculum for that? And yes, we do, in Dorchester County, we use a an online platform, Microburst, to help with some of our soft skills training. And that's been very effective, but again, it's one of those things where you really need to be able to put it into action. And so when you get on the job and when you're in these programs, that the, the technical skills, they're going to teach our students and some, our students know a lot of the technical skills, but they're going to be able to hone those skills on the job. It's those soft skills that we are constantly trying to, to push, trying to emphasize. And so I think that's the piece that was, that was always, you know, across all pathways and clusters and, and industries, you know, everybody wanted to, you know, get the, the, the assurance that we were going through that with our students before they were going out there. And yes, I mean, we have that in place. Again, we've had great students that have participated in the program and I think they've really shown that, you know, what we're doing on our side, at our level, is, is everything we can to help prepare them to be successful when they get on the job. And I know that our, our business partners really appreciate that. You know, like Ms. Stewart said, hey, showing up to work on time, that's a skill set and being able to manage your time that, you know, as adults, we have it quite mastered. So to have a student who's at least aware of that and, and can really put in those, you know, those positive habits and those good habits, that, you know, that, that, that's the first step. Once we can get, you know, to work on time and we're, we're behaving on the job the way we should, you know, that's when the learning and the experience can really, can really start and kind of, kind of blossom. So, yeah. Yeah, thanks, that's, thanks for that, Mark. Trisha, I, I want to have you tell us a little bit about how being involved in the youth apprenticeship work has changed the way you market and recruit students into this program. As a, as a counselor and a person who works with counselors across the region, I'm wondering whether or not the strategies you've employed to engage students in this work have changed over time or that you're learning new ways to do things. You have some advice for those who are listening today about how, how to do this and I'm also curious about the issue of parents, parents and student bias about what it means to be in an apprenticeship and frequently many of these manufacturing programs, you know, many of the trade programs have, you know, an image of that needs to be addressed so that people understand how high tech these fields really are now and they're not, they're not your grandfather's shop program, right? Yeah, well, I was gonna say, I'll start with that last one first. Yeah, it is, it was, I should say was in the beginning a very hard sell to some parents because they do see it as back in the, you know, in the day when grandpa worked at a factory or and so they, they had that picture of what a youth apprentice was. But I think we're fortunate in that we individual graduation plans and like all the districts have been talking about this seamless transition from elementary, middle to high, working with our kids, helping them identify, you know, what their, what their skill sets are and helping them identify potential careers and then when they hit the high schools and are here with us as counselors, we get that individual time with them to be able to talk about their, you know, what their career goals are, have their parents and discuss the youth apprentice programs and so they, those came about at a perfect time as we were kind of revamping and going back into those, you know, looking at those trades. So it's easy to me as a counselor to work that into our conversations and as long as we can show the parent the connection between what their child wants to do and, you know, happiness in the future and their career goals and how it's right down the street and they're going to have, you know, a job with an employer in the local community, they're going to get some of those skills that they need even before leaving high school. In the beginning it was a hard sell but now we have parents that just come in and that's all they want to talk about. They want to see how the youth apprentice program can be connected to their child's goal. So, you know, I think, and Sonia was in the beginnings of this when we first started them in Berkeley County and so we really focused hard on training all the school counselors, not just high school. We reached down to middle schools making sure they understood what they are so we can take our personal biases out of it, you know, we can take our personal opinion out of it and actually speak about youth apprentice programs from the benefits of the student and so that counselors all receive training every year. We make sure that's part of our IGP process and what we talk about and then we, you know, try to intact as a great job educating our parents. They do yearly meetings with our parents. We push that information out. We have parents calling in August to know when is, you know, when is the youth apprentice meeting so we can go down to Trident and visit with the employers and hear more about the programs directly from Trident. So, do you, would you say that over time the strategies that you've used to do outreach to youth youth in this program have you used some sort of non-traditional resources to get to students and who are in communities as that may not necessarily have access to this effort or may not be as well informed. So, you find out a challenge. Yeah, well, yeah, I kind of open that to everybody. If anybody else can address this first, but maybe everyone else can think about this a little bit. Yeah, we find it a challenge. I know in Berkeley County, we are such a large county and some of our high schools are so far from Trident Tech and transportation is an issue, but you know, we've been working through all of those issues and all those concerns to try to help, you know, get those students there. So, I think just, you know, I think we've done, we've just honed in on the conversations with our parents and actually making our IGP meetings purposeful. More so, and those are our individual graduation plan meetings than just checking a box with a parent. So, we make sure we have enough time, especially with 10th graders, because that's the year we're really talking about and really recruiting and trying to get them in Accuplacer and all the testing that required, you know, that's required for it and laying out their coursework. So, if, you know, the biggest challenge I know in Berkeley County we've had is the transportation issue. If we can jump that hurdle, then, you know, we do so much better with some of those kids. So, can anyone in the group give some examples of ways in which you have jumped that hurdle? Are there some avenues that you've used to try to provide, whether it's transportation or other barriers that students might face to accessing the program, how you address those? I would say, in regards to transportation, I think, when the apprenticeship allowed students that were graduating to participate opened up doors for more students to live out in the rural areas to participate. My son is a youth apprentice. We live, you know, in a rural area, St. Stephen, which is a good little ways away and understanding that he would need to do high school and travel to try that, even though he had transportation, it would have been a bit of a challenge. So, we knew that if he had this opportunity, you know, when he graduated, it probably would be a little bit easier for him. Also, with the program and then reaching out to find employers even closer to some of our areas has been very beneficial. So, students may not have to travel as far to work if they live out in the rural areas. So, that has been really beneficial trying to hone in on some additional employers that are closer to where those students live who are out in the rural areas. Anyone want to add to that, Richard? Yes, ma'am. I think, number one, the messaging and getting the word out is still our number one obstacle. We have hundreds of school counselors throughout Charleston County School District and one of the panelists just mentioned about the IGP process. All IGPs are not created equal. Some counselors are very CTE forward. Here are CTE courses, career readiness, internship, apprenticeship. They roll with it. They drink the Kool-Aid. And what we need to do is to take that and bottle that and mimic that so that all six, well, tens of thousands of CCSD students get a similar experience, similar message. I understand that it's not the only thing that has to be put out during an IGP conference. I understand that. I've been in them as a parent and also as an educator at the school level. But like I said previously or earlier in this panel, every child has a future and a career, we hope, unless, of course, they're independently wealthy and maybe they don't have to work. But for most of us, we have a career, whatever that means. And and it's hard to argue against an apprenticeship. It really gives the kid a competitive advantage. Can you imagine on your resume a two-year apprenticeship with Boeing or Bosch or Naiwif, Mercedes Benz? I mean, and a recommendation from one of the supervisors at the at the corporation. I mean, that is worldwide. And it just opens up so many doors and puts them at an advantage compared to others. And so again, it's that perception and getting that messaging out continues to be our two biggest obstacles in Charleston County. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, when we talk about access, you mentioned this earlier, Richard, this notion of, you know, making sure that all students have access to programs. And it's, it's more than, it's more than anyone can enroll or, you know, you open the doors and say, y'all come, right? A lot of people can't even get to the threshold. And so part of your part of the responsibility here in terms of really looking at equity in these programs is how is it that I reach into my community in order to be able to bring students, you know, into this in whatever way it might be, whether it's addressing this from a cultural perspective, an image perspective, you know, a financial perspective, you know, trying to break down all those barriers so that that students can have access. Mark, you on, you on muted, you wanted to, to add in, jump in here, please, too. Well, yeah, our big initiative this year and I'm, you know, our district is, is smaller than Charleston and Berkeley County. And but it doesn't mean that we offer anything less. So, you know, we don't have quite the student enrollment, but we still have and are proud of all of our programs. And, you know, we'd like to think that, you know, no matter where a student is in the region, they're going to get the same opportunities. That being said, yeah, I was going to say the same thing as Mr. Gordon, you know, getting the word out, our initiative this year has been to really have CTE and our counseling department communicate more than they've ever had before. We, we've had some transition in our district. And so we felt like this was a great time to kind of, you know, invigorate and reinforce that relationship between CTE and our counseling department. And so we've made, you know, we've got several meetings on the books to be able to go out and meet with counselors at our middle school and high school levels, especially to really try to get our counselors excited, but really just get them as much information as possible because that is a extremely difficult job to have, I guess, you know, 45 minutes to an hour of an IGP meeting and you're trying to not only get a student to graduate and take care of all the requirements they need, you know, just to be successful in the school, but also try to plan out, you know, the potentially the next 40 years of their life through a career, 40, 50 years. And so, you know, my appreciation for the counselors is extremely high. And I just, I felt like it was really a good opportunity for us while we look at all these opportunities, especially one like the youth apprenticeships that's so involved and requires, you know, a real commitment from the family to be able to explain that as best we could in that IGP because while I would love to be in all of them to push CTE, that's not possible. And especially for our neighboring counties with all the students they have, you know, we all face that same challenge, but I think that's important to really, you know, take care of it on our side as far as getting information to our folks, including our teachers. I mean counselors, but our teachers as well, you know, they need to be as informed as they can, especially in their particular area and pathway and have conversations with their business partners in their pathway. You know, reach out, talk to them with, if you don't have a business partner that is as engaged as you feel, you know, as a teacher, go out there and start those conversations. And that's what we're here for is to really help with those and to be able to, you know, answer any questions that they may have from that side as well. Robert, I wanted to ask you a little bit about and maybe your, you know, all your secondary partners here can address this as well is the challenges around articulation across systems. You know, I have to, I'm looking back again at the title of today's panel and I want to make sure that we at least address this question somewhere in this conversation, which I think we are in many ways, but this notion of alignment between all of the systems in order to one, make sure that students have a seamless path through the program to employment. And you all have done some, what I consider to be some pretty amazing and creative things in order to make that happen. Robert, you know, maybe you can talk a bit about from the, from the college's perspective, what's that, what does that look like? How, how has that been for you and, and maybe some advice to folks about how to make that happen? Well, in partnership with the three school districts, local school districts, we developed a workforce pathway from basically the high schools to the technical college. We came up with a advanced placement agreement. So students who took welding or machine tool at the high school will receive advanced placement into our programs at Trident Technical College. Even if they're not, you know, they don't have to be in the apprenticeship. Just taking completing the welding and the machine tool programs at the high school level, they transition right into the college and an advanced placement. And basically they'll, they can knock off almost maybe a semester worth of coursework. What we did is we aligned, we got with the instructors at the local school districts and examined both of us compared our course level outcomes and the competencies needed for those students and aligned basically our curriculum to meet those competencies. And once we did that, we figured out, okay, we can award credit for these particular classes once they take and complete their program. And I assume and you all can validate this that that is a great incentive for students to participate in this, in the apprenticeship program. Do they see it that way? Anybody want to jump on that one? You have to, sometimes you have to jump up and down and do tricks to show them that, that you can get high school credit, you can get college credit, you can get paid in certain situations. You know, so there are those extrinsic motivational factors that hook some of them. For us, most of the interest comes from they self-identify with the career cluster. You know, when I always wanted to be an engineer, I always wanted to work in the culinary field. You know, I always wanted to be a nurse. And and like we talked about starting at an early age, you know, when they first learn about occupations, maybe they thought their teacher was the only job that there was on planet Earth, because that's who they saw every day. Or, you know, maybe mom or dad did, or perhaps they know fireman and policeman, you know, because of the uniforms. So at early ages, they're learning those, those, the career awareness, that's what we call that. For us, it's mostly, yes, that is a hook, but they have to kind of, it's in the heart that really gets them to end their parents too. It has, their parents have to believe it. You have to hit their heart before you can hit their mind. So if you can convince the parents and the kids, it goes from there. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to follow up with you. It's selling it to the parents. I know we as counselors, that's been, that's been the, probably one of the bigger hurdles was just helping those parents understand that because your child's choosing to go through youth apprentice, doesn't mean that later on in life, they may not change path and go somewhere else. But getting the parents, if we can get the parents to believe in it, then, you know, it's, it's an easy sell to me, or at least in this school to our kids. It's usually the parent that gets the, you know, that has more questions and a little hesitant and well, they were going to go to Clemson or they were going to go to, you know, and so it's that cell, it's that cell with parents. That's the hardest. Yeah. And you can still go to Clemson or USC or Georgia Tech, even with an apprenticeship. In fact, Right, right. It makes your application, a stronger application when you have those experiences. I agree. Doing anything in particular to encourage non-traditional students to access the youth apprenticeship programs like for example, young men in your healthcare programs or women in your advanced tech tech programs or the manufacturing areas. I mean, I've visited churches. I go to career day events before prior to COVID, but just trying to get the word out, you know, and believe it or not, some parents and kids still aren't aware of it, but just trying to get that word out. Like I said, I I sing the praises all the time on the program. Yeah. So any of you use, and maybe that's not the right term I should use, have your students represent the program in, you know, whether it's your high school students go down in the elementary school and visit with other kids and talk about what they're doing or show them what they're doing. Do you use the students who are in the program to represent and promote the programs as well? We typically have students that will serve on panels or do different activities. We'll bring in students that are going straight through the CTE programs. We'll bring in students that are doing apprenticeship programs and to really to speak to younger students, they participate in career fairs or career days at the middle school because we found that, you know, the younger students really look up to the students they're in high school and listen to what they're saying. So we have used students of those capacities. Yeah, you know, student voice is an incredibly powerful thing. You know, peer to peer, guidance counseling almost can have big effects. But we're getting close to the end here. And so what I'd like to do, we have about three minutes left is for each of you to, like we did at the start, I asked you to tell me one thing you loved about the youth apprenticeship work that you're doing. I'm going to ask each of you if you would to share one thing, one piece of advice out there to the folks who are joining us today or who may watch this recording in the future about things to keep in mind if they're going to launch a youth apprenticeship program in their community or to join yours in your region. So I'll start with Robert. We'll start with you. If different regions want to, you know, if they're going to start a youth apprenticeship program, I would say go to your industry. Lean on your industry. Find those skills gaps that are there. Tailor it around your industry and let that be the focus. It has to be industry led because at the end of the day, those students have to go into that workforce. So find what's needed in the community. Thanks, Robert. So Mark, how about you? And we have a little longer than I said. I apologize. I was jumping the gun a little bit. So Mark, go ahead. Of course, I agree with Mr. Elliott. You know, you want to start with your industry partners, but I want to go back to just keep working on getting the word out in the education of the program to our parents. Again, I think the quickest way is through an IGP. But you're only hitting one family at a time. So, you know, be creative in how you promote it. Again, we start as early as middle school talking about, you know, really our work-based learning experiences that are very exploratory. And this falls right in line. I mean, Trident Tech last summer had a great opportunity for a pre-apprenticeship program through culinary. And I think that was a fantastic opportunity because now you're hitting students in the eighth, ninth grade and they're seeing, you know, some of the advantage of that and really just getting hands-on. You know, being a part of it, you can see it and then you can, you know, you can see yourself there. So just be creative on how you get the word out. But yes, I agree with everybody, you know, the selling of the program to parents and to students and getting that family buy-in. And then now the students have that support, not only, you know, the drive, but they have that support from their family is huge. Sonya? I think our Regional Youth Apprenticeship Program is very successful from its inception. It has been successful since its inception because all the parties work together to make it happen. You have the employers, you have the K-12 partners and the post-secondary partners. We all work together from the beginning to develop and to devise this program. So we're all at the table. It would have been different if it was developed by an outside source and the information was just given to K-12 for us to promote. We wouldn't have the buy-in. We wouldn't have the insight or the knowledge behind it. So I think that has been key to the success of the program that we have here. So that's the one piece of advice that I would give out to people who are interested in launching a program is to do that. And just as, you know, Mark and Robert has said also, you know, think about how you're going to create your brand and how you're going to promote it. Because again, that has been really successful for us as well. Thanks, Sonia. Richard, your words of advice. I would say find a champion of work-based learning in your school district. Maybe it's a principal, could be an associate superintendent or a director of instructional programs, someone who believes in it and who can practice it at their level. So if it's a principal, maybe in their school and they start small with a small cohort, what happens is it breeds success. When it works, everybody else wants to find out about it. Everybody else is hearing about it. And then you have to celebrate it. So that's a good way to get the word out. And so then this year you have 13 and next year you have 26 and then 52 and 104. And well, that's pretty much our reason and how that happened. And it's a recruiting and a retention mindset. I tell people the best CTE teachers are ones that have a head coach mentality. They're good at finding kids, recruiting them, and they're good at retaining kids. And it starts at elementary middle school. We talked about how to get them more involved. It's bringing them to your career centers to CTE programs and then putting out little C. And then once we can get them in our career centers, once kids and parents see what CTE is in the classroom, I think that's where it makes a significant impact. But it starts with finding a champion and someone that really wants, that really knows the power of apprenticeship and then practices it and actually executes it. And then that's a great way to launch off of the platform. Thanks, Richard. And Trisha, how about your words of advice? So you know what mine are going to be? Train your school counselors. Have them as a part of this from the beginning. Do really specific purposeful training with them so that they're comfortable talking about youth apprentice. They can be the champions you're looking for for those programs. If they believe in it, they're going to sell it. They're going to sell it to the students and they're going to be able to sell it to the parents. You know, give them tours of the programs. You know, go visit the manufacturers, go visit the employers. But we are, you know, we always say this, we're the boots on the ground. So we're the ones selling the programs specifically to the kids. So if you can get your school counselors involved, I would do it from day one. And I think that's the success of this region is because we were involved from day one. We made it a point to be involved from day one. Well, I want to thank all the panelists for your exceptional engagement here today. Clearly, you all have a tremendous passion for this work and it's about the students. You know, every time you all talk about something, it always landed in the end of the statement about making this work for students, making sure they have access to these programs and eliminating barriers to get them there and helping them be successful all the way through to their placement and employment. I can't thank you enough. I want to encourage everyone to consider Youth Apprenticeship as a significant investment in your youth and that the opportunities that I've seen in these programs are amazing. I was lucky enough to be able to come and visit Trident Tech when the Pathways Youth Apprenticeship Program activities started with New America and I was amazingly impressed. I would also, I would be remiss if I didn't encourage you to go check out our website at NAPEquity.org. We have a great initiative we're doing around women in manufacturing, lots of good resources for educators, recruitment videos and posters and all kinds of strategy documents. Check it out and and go for it. I think, you know, my sample of approval Youth Apprenticeship Rocks. Thanks everyone. I want to thank the representatives from Trident Technical College and the Parker School Districts for participating in this panel and to our moderator, Mimi Lufkin, for that insightful discussion. Join us at 340 Eastern Time for our final panel of the day, the Future of Youth Apprenticeship Policy Systems and Sustainability. It'll be moderated by Pioneer National Director Taylor White and we'll get a deeper dive into how we can continue this work after this event. Thank you.