Episode 75: Preparing Students for the Workforce with Mr. Bob Ceh

SHOW TOPIC
Preparing Students for the Workforce with Mr. Bob Ceh

SPECIAL GUEST
Mr. Bob Ceh, Seneca Valley Senior High School Principal 

Bob Ceh is finishing his 30th year in public education, all at Seneca Valley.  He has served as a teacher and dean of students for the first 20 years of his career in the middle and high schools.  For the past nine years, he has served as a principal in the district, four years in Ryan Gloyer Middle School and five years in the Senior High School.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW

• The Seneca Valley Co-op program
•  The five SV Career Pathways
•  Benefits of the Graduation Project
• SV alumni returning as guest speakers in classrooms

Transcript

FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)

 00:00:02:26 - 00:00:10:11

Welcome to Voices, a national award-winning podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District. 

 00:00:11:04 - 00:00:16:20

Jeff Krakoff: Today, our guest is Seneca Valley High School Principal Bob Ceh. Thanks for being with us today. 

 00:00:18:12 - 00:00:19:10

Bob Ceh: Thanks for having me. 

 00:00:20:04 - 00:00:33:05

Jeff Krakoff: You know, we're focusing this month on workforce development, training of students for all different kinds of careers. So at the high school level, if you could just provide a broad overview, what's available to high school students? 

 00:00:34:20 - 00:01:57:20

Bob Ceh: As of right now, we have several options. You know, we like to talk about it in terms of year 13, what's going to happen after the students finished 12th grade. And we have a lot of options. Certainly a majority of our students go or going to college or have some type of post-secondary plan, whether that's a college, a trade school, going to the military, you know, all the traditional options. But we've also tried to get into different workforce developments as well. And how do we guide students into maybe some different careers and or maybe even different majors that align with different careers? Because again, when we all went to school, you know, there's so many more jobs out there that if you're not in the loop of looking and searching for jobs, you may not really understand what's available and what people do anymore. You know, and especially within education, where many of us have been in this field for so long. And so we have all of those programs, including, you know, our technical institution up at Butler County Vo-Tech, and that's another avenue for workforce development. So we've got our co-op program, I think I've mentioned and also looking at maybe aligning and adding some classes that are geared more specifically towards, um, career development. 

 00:01:58:01 - 00:02:09:17

Jeff Krakoff: Got it. So how does that fit into the whole idea of the Seneca Valley, the five career pathways to helping students have an idea of what's possible, what courses to take? 

 00:02:11:04 - 00:03:13:28

Bob Ceh: So what we have determined and the conclusions that we've come to are and we know there's a lot of purposes for school. You can't say, well, there's just one purpose for school, and that's to get them ready for a career. You know, there's going to be a lot of people that argue that careers can get them ready for careers. And there's different reasons to be in high school and we get that. So this isn't the sole purpose, but we've slowly started to understand that we want kids to be more engaged in their educational process. And we think we can do that by aligning it with where they want to go for a career. And so what we've done is I'll just use a number of 500 classes. We have available ninth through 12th, either traditional or in a cyber format, and they are normally listed by departments, English, science, math, social studies, our family consumer science. You know, the traditional departments is how they're listed and broken down so the kids know how to access these classes. 

 00:03:14:05 - 00:04:54:03

Bob Ceh: And what we find is we have some really good classes that kids aren't necessarily finding because they're when you leave high school, they're, you know, if you go to college, there's an English department and you have these departments. But in a real world, there's not in English math, science or social science department. It's called life and it's called this is my career field. And so what we've done is said, let's take all of our classes and break them into these five career clusters that are this is where the majority of kids are going into one of these five career clusters. And so we asked each one of our teachers to say, if you're going into this career cluster, the Class two presently teach, is it necessary to be to take this class in order to excel or achieve in this career cluster? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. You know, if you're going into engineering, you know, you might argue, well, in English, I really shouldn't do as much literature. I should probably do more technical writing. You know, again, there's an argument there, but it's something that we're starting to move towards and give kids more of a choice to do some of those things. So we're trying to align. We basically have taken our program of studies and sliced it into five equal or close to equal portions of if you're in this category, I want to go into Health and Human Services. Here's the fifth of the classes and there is overlap. Here's a fifth of the classes that align. So these are the ones we recommend that you pick. Uh, so that's what we're trying to do with our pathways and have kids think about the classes they want using their careers and their interests as a backdrop. 

 00:04:54:05 - 00:05:20:26

Bob Ceh: Now, that doesn't mean it's exclusively in there. You might want to take pottery just because you have an interest in it, but it has nothing to do with your career, and that's okay too. So we've allowed for flexibility for students to go outside of their pathway to pick up classes. And I think a great example of that is music. We have a very strong music program, but we don't have a lot of students who go into music as a career. They just like music. So we want to still afford those opportunities because that's part of the purpose of high school to being engaged. 

 00:05:21:15 - 00:05:46:09

Jeff Krakoff: So in addition to class selection or align with what you may want to do, you know, we've had other guests in the past talk about the Graduation Project. Every senior has to complete that. How does that fit into the whole idea? Because, you know, one of the things I've heard from other guests was it's so wide open and you can do so many different things with this. How does that fit into workforce development? 

 00:05:46:22 - 00:07:18:11

Bob Ceh: So we did actually this year, we switched. We used to have six or seven categories that students could choose from to where they wanted to do their senior project. And this year what we did is we align that and we have six choices now. Five of them are aligned to the pathways, really trying to get kids to think of more and or better ways of how can they connect their project to what they want to do for living and actually go out and do some job shadowing or some research on that category of job or that that sector? Because, you know, what we found is kids have an interest, but they don't get the depth on of it. And so what we're finding is some of the kids are starting to do this and are understanding, yes, I definitely want to do this or no, I'm not so sure I want to do this now because of the senior project. Now we only have five career pathways. And again, that some schools have six, some have seven. We went with five. We also have a sixth category though in senior project which is self-development, personal development. You want to do something to make yourself just better. That maybe has nothing to do with your career, but we've left that in there as an option as well. But that's part of the goal of senior project and we're talking more about shifting it towards that's always been a portion, but we're trying to shift it more towards the career exploration, job shadowing, aligning that experience with where you want to go in the future so you have a better knowledge base of where you're going. 

 00:07:18:25 - 00:07:26:07

Jeff Krakoff: All right. Now I'm aware that Seneca Valley has a really good co-op program. What is that all about? How does it work? 

 00:07:26:27 - 00:09:04:27

Bob Ceh: So we have we've always had a co-op program and it's sort of been stigmatized in the past that if you if you hate school or you don't like school, just go get a job. You can leave halfway through, get a couple of credits, and you don't have to spend all day in school. And, you know, obviously everybody uses that a little bit differently. Some people use it to a great advantage and other people were just using it to get out of school. Whatever your reason was, it sort of was stigmatized as that. Now we've sort of reborn our program and Aaron Scholar is our teacher of that right now. And what we're looking for is student aligning their co-op job with either something they're currently interested in or finding an interest for them. And so we've got some, you know, student wants to go into engineering. You know, we've got some engineering firms, students into fabrication. We have Seresco on board the can they fabricate metal for the back of trucks and they're willing to do apprentices and whatnot. And then we have some kids that maybe you're saying, hey, I want to do this, but I don't know where. I don't know. I'm not sure where to go. Yeah, but I want to do I want to get into an industry. So they would go and talk to our teacher, Mrs. Scholar, and she could say, here's what I have available, what interest you? And they can design it themselves a little bit and the experience and it really so we're trying to make it more authentic and more meaningful than just a job. 

 00:09:05:06 - 00:10:15:20

Bob Ceh: Now some kids still just have a job, but what they do then is they align that with a financial management piece, okay, you're in this job now, you're making this kind of money. So when they come back into school, part of what they deal with and talk about is how do I manage the money that I'm making? And so they've added that piece into it as well. And the other, you know, traditionally this has not been a college route. Um, program. You know, if you were going to college, you pretty much stayed in school all day and got all of your academic credits. But now we do have some kids that, hey, just because I've gone to college and maybe I am going for engineering, can I get two elective credits doing this in an engineering firm? So that's, you know, we're at the beginning stages of remaking this and we've got about 25-30 kids involved in it right now and we're looking to grow that. I had a long conversation about that today of how do we continue to grow as we start to shift more towards preparing kids for the world in which they're going to enter, not the ones that we all entered whenever that was. You know, we all we want to listen. This is at a different age. So that's a generalization. 

 00:10:16:08 - 00:10:26:12

Jeff Krakoff: So we've talked a lot about the more formal types of programs, but what are some other ways that students are being prepared for the workforce at Seneca Valley? 

 00:10:27:01 - 00:11:53:20

Bob Ceh: So what we've been talking a lot about with the teachers is the 21st century skills of collaboration and creativity and being able to communicate. Being able to be productive and manage your own time with more people working at home and less at have a boss physically around them. How do you do these things? So, you know, these are all 21st century skills. And I know we're a third of the way into the, I guess, a quarter of the way into the 21st century now. And we're still working on these. But we continue to talk about how do we implement these in an everyday routine for kids so that they start to understand, you know, these are the things that you need in the world, you know, and I try to talk to the kids early in a year and I say, you know, everyone says, well, this isn't the real world. And I always look around and say, well, what is this fake? You know, this is the real world you're in right now. But I think what they're saying is the difference is right now, you've got a lot of teachers and people around you that will prompt and support and do whatever it takes to get you to point B. And when you leave here, that doesn't necessarily happen. So you've got to assume a lot of those things on your own because people just don't do that for you. You've got to do it. So we're trying to find ways to continue to make that part of our instruction, part of our conversation, part of our purpose. 

 00:11:54:13 - 00:13:27:01

Bob Ceh: And, you know, we can then formalize that through our co-op program and the senior project and, you know, students choosing to go to the Vo-Tech. Yeah. You know, those are all ways that they can formalize and start to make those decisions. And we have. I'll give you one more example. We have a program that comes in called PNC Partner up. PNC is the supporter and the provider of this. They we have a lady that comes in from PNC and teaches seven two-hour classes. Of that runs you through of how do you pick a career to how do you interview, how do you watch your social media? What do you value? What are you willing to do? What are your strengths? All of those things that then by the end, the sixth and seventh class of this is they get an interview for one of these companies. Now it's PNC that runs it, but they represent about six or seven local companies that are all looking for candidates out of high school. And a lot of these are. Um, you know, career type jobs that also have education benefits. You know, if you go to work for them, then they would help pay for your education as you are working for them. So that's another example of, you know, us trying to provide more opportunities for kids to access careers and information for careers before they graduate and enter year 13. 

 00:13:27:10 - 00:13:47:18

Jeff Krakoff: All right. It's funny you mentioned the real world, right? And I know that one of the ways a lot of schools and classes will give a glimpse of the end quote marks the real world. You either bring guests in to speak to the classes or you take the class out to get to experience what people are doing. How often does that happen and can you provide some examples? 

 00:13:48:21 - 00:15:42:25

Bob Ceh: It does happen. And one of our mottos here is we got to take the inside out and we got to bring the outside in. You know, we've got to mesh these more if we're going to make this a more authentic place of learning. And so we do have and it happens more in some of our upper level science classes that maybe are geared towards physics or the medical field or the chemistry field. We have a STEM Alumni Day where all of those are a number of former graduates that are working in a field come back. They bring the outside in and they speak to our kids about the programs that are in the careers that they have, the mistakes they made, the successes they've had. Um, you know, so we have a number of but we have well over 100 speakers that come in. We also I know, you know, in our family consumer science department and our tech department, there's a lot of outside type of competitions that then are judged and are interacting with people in the field like our box IQ. You know, they're interacting with people on the outside about how to build these robots and, you know, things of that nature. So we've got we've done some partnerships with local colleges to bring them in. Robert Morris, LaRoche, BC3 um, I think Point Park might be one of them. We have a number of different partners that we, we have. They're bringing them in. Um, some teachers have just specific. I know we just had a class. Our anatomy class went to see open heart surgery. So they witnessed that. That was this week at some point. So we are trying to engage them and give them opportunities to connect to the outside world and bring that outside world into Seneca Valley as well. 

 00:15:42:29 - 00:15:53:02

Jeff Krakoff: I love that. The inside out, outside in. So you provide some great info. Bob, are there any additional thoughts you want to share with us before I let you go? 

 00:15:53:28 - 00:16:26:22

Bob Ceh: Well, we're not we're not quite there yet, you know, and it's a the traditional school is one it's a lot of people expect a lot of people accept and um, you know and this is a slow moving process as we develop these relationships and try to move in this direction. But it is on the forefront of all of our minds as we continue to do our work as how does what we're doing in here transfer to the outside world. And so we're continuing to find both formal and informal ways to accomplish that. 

 00:16:27:02 - 00:16:32:11

Jeff Krakoff: All right. So that was Seneca Valley High School Principal Bob Ceh. Thanks again for your time today. 

 00:16:32:29 - 00:16:33:24

Bob Ceh: Sir. Thank you. 

 00:16:33:26 - 00:16:34:27

Jeff Krakoff: All right. Take care.