Education Meets Industry: Building the Future Workforce in Columbia – Montour
Chris Berleth Columbia Montour Chamber of Commerce CEO/President
“Soft skills are much too hard to be called soft skills.”
That was the opinion of Nick Lee-Romagnolo, a workforce development leader from Amazon, which was shared during the Chamber Foundation’s Annual K-12 Educator Summit on August 7. In place of “soft skills,” he offered another term: “durable skills.”
“Durable skills,” he said, “are the ones employers need every day and that follow people from one job to the next: communication, literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to work well with others.” That’s why “durable” feels more accurate than “soft,” and why the phrase kept coming back throughout the day.
I love it when Chamber events and member feedback confirm what we know. The workforce challenges facing our region are not new to us. We know and have been hearing for years what’s going on.
Employers talked about how hard it is to find qualified people. Educators talked about what students need to be ready for life after school. Ed Avila, Amazon’s local operations leader, pointed out that technical ability only tells part of the story. While a résumé can show what someone has done, a strong candidate still has to explain the results they produced. Fred Gaffney echoed the “durable skills” need, sharing that in the skilled trades, where mechanical ability matters, but judgment and communication with customers is just as important, and the skill just as nuanced.
Liz Shotwell brought the education side into the discussion, and confirmed that educators have been hearing and trying to address these gaps in soft skills. She talked about the limits schools face, including time, attendance, and the challenge of creating meaningful opportunities for students outside the classroom. One new approach Berwick is taking is a project-based model where students are challenged to demonstrate leadership by addressing community issues. This model is seeing success, and it’s part of a larger, nationwide effort called “the empowerment collaborative”.
We all agree on the challenge, but the summit was a means of agreeing on solutions.
Educators need access to businesses so they can better understand the jobs that exist here and the skills those jobs require. Employers need to open their doors to teachers and students and help schools see what success looks like inside their workplaces, which is exactly why we brought back Educator in the Workplace, or E.I.W., and why we’re confident that the results of that program will pay big dividends for our community in the years to come.
If you’ve tuned into the Chamber lately, you’ve likely heard me boast about the Arconic Foundation’s investment in this program, which places educators inside local businesses so they can see the work firsthand and talk directly with employers. At this summer’s E.I.W. graduation program, we heard teachers explain how those experiences were already changing the way they planned to teach.
One second-grade teacher talked about using the familiar game of “telephone” to teach students the importance of listening and clear communication. After seeing firsthand how important communication is among staff at Geisinger, she was already thinking differently about how to connect that lesson to the workplace. The traditional “telephone” game suddenly turned into a practical appreciation for communications in crisis and emergency settings. Instead of “Johnny told Suzie X”, the new lesson plan is, “Dr. Johnny told Nurse Suzie X”, followed by, “What happens if Suzie misunderstands?”
That’s a powerful lesson, with real consequences, and it’s about being immersed in an educational system that prepares students for a variety of careers. The lesson plans were just a small part of it. There’s a new awareness for our teachers about the realities of the local workforce that only comes with immersion. For the student who says, “I’m not going to be a doctor,” it’s just as important for their teachers, guidance counselors, and influencers to know that the clinical side of Geisinger represents only 20-30% of their workforce. There’s plenty of room for great careers here, and not only in healthcare, but in finance, advanced manufacturing, engineering, professional services, and a host of others.
The K-12 Summit is always an encouragement to me, because in addition to a room full of industry and education agree on the challenges, I can confidently say that it helped reinforce where the Foundation goes next.
As we connected with these leaders, we confirmed that we’ll need to refine our approach to career experiences so students too have more meaningful contact with employers. Jerome Manley, of Commonwealth University, is leading our efforts to develop a one-stop-shop kind of Regional Career Pathways Fair to be one piece of that work. We’re also exploring literacy and numeracy tools that connect basic classroom skills more clearly to how they’re used on the job – because we’re hearing at an increasingly alarming rate that when students don’t learn to read, they don’t read to learn.
Your Chamber and Foundation are committed to doing this work, bringing employers and educators together, listening to what each side needs, and helping turn good conversation into action. Sometimes that means building a program, and sometimes it means advocating for a better approach. Sometimes, it means putting the right people in the room and giving them a chance to figure something out together.
We understand the problem. Now the work is building relationships, experiences, and tools that help us do something about it.
When we ask, “Where are we going to find qualified people?” the answer that comes first revolves around what we’re doing to help our young people become them.
Stay tuned for more from the K-12 Summit, Educator in the Workplace, and ways you can support the work of the Chamber and its Foundation to prepare the 21st Century workforce for careers here in Columbia and Montour Counties.
