The Work Force is a comprehensive
educational enrichment and work-readiness program for low-income teens in Cambridge public
housing. Unusual for its depth of
engagement with young people, the program provides participants with sustained
networks of learning and support over a developmentally significant five-year
span: from the eighth grade through their senior year in high school. Since its inception in 1984, The Work Force
has used what has since come to be known as a youth development approach,
focusing more on building students’ strengths than on ameliorating their
deficits to promote achievement in all the venues in which participants conduct
their lives: at home, at school and at work.
For nearly 25 years, The Work Force has helped 130 – 140 low-income
teens annually to broaden their horizons and to develop the wide range of
competencies necessary for long-term success.
A central goal of the program is to weave
a web of support across a broad range of individuals and institutions, giving
teens a reassuring model of adult cooperation. To achieve this goal, The Work
Force operates from facilities located in the city’s three largest family
public housing developments, promoting particularly strong connections with
students and their families. In
addition, the program cultivates relationships with school personnel and with
over 45 local “employer-mentors” to create what staff has called “a conspiracy
of nurturance” among the adults in its young participants’ lives.
By design, the program serves
youth with a wide range of interests and abilities. Participation requires only that students
live in public housing and be enrolled in school. While some Work Force participants are excellent
students, some are marginalized and lack the sustained support they need to
thrive academically. This is
particularly troubling in light of the fact that CHA students comprise 54% of
the city’s public high school, and 44 % of all public school students in Cambridge. School studies and Work Force staff
experience indicate that Work Force students (and other low-income, minority
youth), are perennially on the losing side of the academic achievement gap, a
deficit which greatly diminishes their ability to break the bonds of poverty
and join the social and economic mainstream.
The ethnic breakdown is currently
40% Haitian, 24% African-American, 14% Latino, 11% Bi-Racial, 5% Asian, 2% Cape Verdean, 2% African and 2% Caucasian.
Program Structure
The
Work Force offers a 5-year sequence of highly structured, paid classroom
workshops and "try? out" employment experiences in conjunction with
counseling and case management services and supports for academic success. Through the development of generic skills in
decision?making, conflict resolution, goal?setting, communication, values
clarification, and money management, youth are gradually prepared to leave the
familiarity of their own communities and venture into the world of work. Most participate for the full five years,
from 8th grade through high school graduation and during that time
they are exposed to a variety of work settings in which they may test their
newly?acquired skills and explore numerous possible career paths. Through
achievement of a series of incremental goals, self?image and job readiness are
improved.
The
program operates in two "cycles" each academic year, following a
basic semester schedule. The school year
is devoted to after-school workshops at Work Force offices, “try-out” jobs with
and mentoring by area employers, Homework Help Centers staffed by Work Force
alumni attending area colleges, MCAS and SAT Prep classes, a College Prep
program and regular monitoring of school attendance and performance and case
management services.
The
fall cycle recruits youth during the months of August and September, but is not
fully operational until participants are settled into school. That cycle ends in January, at which point
the staff recruit new participants as space permits. The spring cycle begins in February and ends
with the annual Awards Ceremony in early June.
Throughout the spring, Work Force staff assist participants to find both subsidized and unsubsidized
summer jobs. The summer is devoted to a
Summer Literacy Camp, described in some detail below.
The
Work Force is staffed by a Program Director, three Teacher-Counselors and an
Employment Partnership Coordinator, as well as 3 part-time Homework Center
Coordinators who are Work Force alumni attending local colleges. The Work Force Teacher-Counselors are the
backbone of the program, providing education and case management services to
teens, recruiting and enrolling participants, teaching classes, counseling individual youth, acting as adult role models
and serving as the primary link to parents and school personnel.
1. Life Skills/Literacy
Development Workshops
The
after-school classroom aspect of the program is structured to offer
participants an opportunity to gain a clear understanding of the skills,
values, and training necessary for negotiating the adult world of employment
and responsibility. A 5-year-long
curriculum has been developed by Work Force staff over many years which
provides written lesson plans to guide the classroom work of Teacher-Counselors
at each program level. That curriculum
functions as a living document which is revised regularly as participant needs
change. The most recent version of the
curriculum has been developed to include a strong emphasis on literacy skills
development, with specific units teaching reading comprehension skills at the
beginning of the year.
At
each of the first two program levels (8th and 9th grade), the curriculum
includes a 5- to 6-week unit in which students read and discuss a high-interest
book, revisiting and reviewing basic reading comprehension skills taught in the
program’s Summer Literacy Camp for rising 9th graders and using the
experiences of characters in the book to reflect on their own lives and
values. Literacy skills are then honed
through follow-up reading comprehension and writing activities which are woven
into the ensuing units at all levels. By
the twelfth grade, reading comprehension skill development gives way to a
stronger emphasis on writing skills, as students begin to prepare to write
their college essays.
2.
Employment/Mentorship
When
their more affluent peers enter the world of work, the point of entrée is often
a relative, friend of the family or neighbor, who gives them their first job
and acts as an informal mentor, teaching them basic employability skills and
helping them to overcome work-related problems.
Because Work Force parents are not similarly well-connected, The Work
Force approaches local employers on behalf of its students, inviting those
employers to become, in essence, “friends of the family” or, in the terminology
of the program, “employer-mentors.” In
consideration for the time and attention this mentoring role requires, The Work
Force subsidizes 50% of each student’s wages.
Forty to fifty employer-mentors each year agree to work with students
for at least a semester and to expose students during that time to the various
career tracks available within that place of business and guiding them through
acculturation to the world of work.
Students are encouraged to use these “try-out” jobs as opportunities to
explore a variety of work sites and career trajectories over the course of
their participation in The Work Force.
Work
sites include both large and small businesses.
Private sector placements are favored over those in the public sector,
as they are considered to provide more "real life" experience and
avenues of opportunity. Public sector
placements are utilized, however, for inexperienced participants who need a
particularly high level of support.
The
Work Force is highly selective in developing work sites. Potential employers are interviewed by the
Work Force Employment Partnership Coordinator, who assesses each potential
supervisor’s ability to mentor young employees and to provide participants with
real work experience. While entry level
work is the norm, "dead?end" jobs, such as those in fast food
restaurants, are avoided.
Placements
are favored in which participants are exposed to a range of organizational
activity and a variety of job functions.
Being a messenger or a clerical assistant, for example, can be highly
rewarding if there is a concurrent opportunity to learn about the roles of
various departments or individuals in the organization, what experience is
required for different positions, and how one gains that experience. Participants are encouraged to try out a
range of job placements over the course of several program cycles. In this way, job placements become learning
experiences which familiarize participants with career ladders in a variety of
settings.
In
order to maintain a high level of support for both employers and young workers,
the Employment Partnership Coordinator maintains regular contact with all
employer-mentors. At the outset, work
site learning goals are established with the employer-mentor and the teen. The Employment Partnership Coordinator then
monitors attendance and work performance and resolves problems between
employers and workers as necessary.
During the term of the placement, work site supervisors are provided
with in-service training in adolescent development and mentorship and employers
formally evaluate students at the end of each term of employment
3. Educational Supports
The
link between public housing and the public schools is a cornerstone of The Work
Force. The program encourages students
to maintain strong attendance records, to enhance their academic performance,
and to consider the critical connection between education and career
development. Post-secondary education is
presented as both a viable option and a logical goal for all students.
In addition to teaching the Work Force life skills
and literacy development workshops described above, Teacher-Counselors create
and maintain on-going collaborative relationships with public school
personnel. Their primary
responsibilities in this arena are as follows:
·
serve as an "external guidance
counselor" for the schools;
·
monitor school attendance and academic
performance;
·
assist students to develop personal/academic
goals and to measure their performance against those goals;
·
plan for youth with special needs and work with
the schools to ensure that appropriate in-school and program-based educational
support services are provided;
·
provide linkages between home and school; and
·
encourage and facilitate access to
post-secondary education, training and/or full-time employment.
The Work Force provides Homework Centers at each of its three site offices. Staffed
by part-time, paid Homework Center
Coordinators (generally Work Force alumni now attending local colleges) and
volunteer tutors from both area colleges and local businesses, these centers
provide a quiet place to study, occasional assistance with specific homework
assignments and more formalized academic tutoring. Adjacent to each Homework Center is a fully-equipped
Computer Lab with Internet access to provide students who don’t
have computers at home with this essential learning tool. Also complementing each Homework Center is a
library of books and magazines which students are encouraged to access. The include specially-selected high interest,
low-reading level books appropriate for students who are struggling with
reading comprehension.
The Work Force has developed a College Prep Program which affords participants, starting at
the age of 13, a steady diet of exposure to admissions officers, college
students and graduates, trips to local and out-of-state colleges, assistance
with applications for admissions and financial aid, and an in-house scholarship
program which provides a modest scholarship to every Work Force graduate who
enrolls in post-secondary education, as well as five competitive, multi-year
scholarships. The intent is to assist youth, nearly all of whom will be their
family’s first generation to college to envision, at an early age, what that
experience will be like and to assist them to prepare for it academically,
experientially and socially.
Upon
completion of his/her participation in the program as 8th graders,
students participate in a Summer Literacy Camp, funded by the
Cambridge Public Schools, which builds their reading comprehension skills. The camp operates four mornings/week for six
weeks during July and August, staffed by the Work Force Teacher-Counselors. Classes teaching reading comprehension skills
are complemented by opportunities for structured reading and reading aloud
through a very popular Reading Buddies collaboration with the local Head Start
program, as well as silent sustained reading times in which students put those
skills to use.
Another academic component funded by the Cambridge Public
Schools is an MCAS Prep
effort targeted at 9th and 10th graders who must pass the
MCAS test as sophomores or thereafter in order to graduate. Held after school in Work Force office
on-site in public housing, this initiative offers weekly instruction in Math,
English and Language Arts and test-taking strategies to students deemed by the
schools and The Work Force to be at risk of failure of the high-stakes MCAS
test based upon prior MCAS scores, Stanford 9 scores, academic record and the
assessment of Cambridge Public Schools personnel and Work Force staff.
And, finally, the local district funds The Work Force to
provide SAT Prep to 11th and 12th graders
to level the playing field as they compete for college admissions with middle
class peers. The program begins in the
second semester of students’ junior year and works with a cadre of about 20
students help them develop the test-taking strategies and self-confidence they
will need to take the SAT in the spring.
The program then reconvenes in the fall to review students’ spring
experience with the test and to prepare them to take it a second time in the
late fall.
Measures
of Success
Since
its inception 1984, The Work Force has achieved a remarkable history of
success. The retention rate among
participants over the five-year term of participation is historically close to
80%. The program boasts virtually a 100%
high school graduation rate. Nearly 80% of students starting in the eighth grade
complete the full five-year program. Among those participants placed in
“try-out jobs” with local employers, 95% successfully complete their job
placements and 80% receive “competent” or “advanced” ratings from employers
regarding mastery of specific work-related competencies. Over 90% of Work Force graduates go on to college upon graduation
from high school.
These
successes have engendered diverse awards and widespread recognition for the
program. Cited for excellence in a
number of books and professional journals, The Work Force was a 1990 winner of
the highly prestigious Ford Foundation/Harvard University Innovations in
American Government Award, and has been designated a Best Practice Program
by the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Youth Employment
Coalition, by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, by the
Commonwealth Corporation and by the MA Department of Housing and Community
Development.
An extensive
third-party study of Work Force alumni was completed in 2008. Work Force students who graduated between 1999
and 2006 were solicited to complete an online survey and approximately 33%
responded. The resulting data spoke to the
overall success of The Work Force in preparing young people to enter the world
of adult choices and responsibilities.
Nearly 85% of respondents indicated a high degree of satisfaction with
the program’s comprehensive services and college prep activities. Despite the tendency for many young adults in
public housing to languish after high school, fully 91% of respondents in the
study were either employed and/or enrolled in higher education. Moreover, in keeping with our mission of
breaking the cycle of poverty, two-thirds of respondents who had graduated from
the program more than four years ago were no longer living in public housing.
