Schools to Careers provides Pendleton students with opportunity

The plan had been to hand over S2C to the Pendleton Chamber in 2020, but the pandemic disrupted that. After more than a year on the back burner, the chamber and Hyatt, who was hired as the Schools to Careers coordinator in late 2021, have taken over and have begun implementing their strategies in classrooms.

Starting program from a clean slate

“When I was hired, the school year was already in full swing, and the S2C program was not on the agenda, the program was a complete unknown as a result of the pandemic,” Hyatt said.

Designing the program has been a day-to-day process, she said, but she keeps the core purpose of developing and increasing work-based learning opportunities at the forefront.

By the fall semester of 2022, Hyatt said, Schools to Careers was functioning to a point it could become a priority, expanding to work with all grades and as a resource for students of Nixyaawii Community School. The East Oregonian has had a couple of the program’s students.

At Pendleton High School, the program has created opportunities for students to meet with professionals from a variety of fields through Work It Wednesdays, when guest speakers came into the school to talk with the students during their advisory period. Work It Wednesdays are in success teacher Sonia Cooley’s room, where Cooley assists in facilitating guests and students.

Pushing motivation

“Even the kids who are college-bound are struggling with motivation issues,” Cooley said. “A lot of them are unmotivated after COVID, the whole thing just put a whack in the plans of how schooling was done for two years or wasn’t done.”

Exposing students to these kinds of opportunities helps them self motivate, Cooley said, and can help bridge a knowledge gap the pandemic created. Another tool S2C uses to build those connections is the facilitation of job shadows and work experiences.

“We have students do an interest survey and use a program to build a database of all the students and what their interests are,” Pendleton High School Assistant Principal Curt Thompson said. “We also keep data on local employment, what jobs and opportunities are available in the database, and we use that to match up kids with what we have available in our region.”

Through the database, Schools to Careers and Pendleton High have been able to pair students or bring in professionals from print shops, newspapers, artists and more.

“We want to provide opportunities for a kid to get some exposure and sample a few things to find out what they like or don’t like,” Thompson said. “If we have a kid that wants to be a veterinarian, great, we have a veterinarian in the system. We can reach out, schedule a shadow, and get them some exposure. Maybe they realized they don’t like blood, so they don’t want to be a veterinarian. We save that kid a lot of time and money pursuing something that wouldn’t work in the end. You may have a kid who decides she does want to be a veterinarian, and then we can move to a cooperative work experience.”

Program also counts for education

By entering the cooperative work experience, students can earn one high school credit for every 65 hours of practice they obtain through the experience. Those cooperative work experiences can be scheduled in a variety of ways, from one-hour placements with professionals to part-time jobs and internships.

“Our big mission right now is building relationships with the community and letting people know that the program still exists,” Thompson said. “We’ve had to take a few steps back before we could move forward after the coronavirus pandemic. We’re running, but we’re rebuilding.”

Kyliee Sanders, a junior at PHS, was shadowing Pendleton Center for the Arts Executive Director Roberta Lavadour on Tuesday, Jan. 24. Sanders chose the arts center because art is a big part of her life, and it felt natural, she said.

“Whether it’s doodling on my papers or in an art class, I’ve always done art,” Sanders said. “Right now I’m into digital art, like learning programs.”

Sanders credited Cooley for getting her to do the job shadow and for changing her mind about going to community college. Sanders said she is not sure if she’ll stick to art, but the job shadow is helping her narrow down her future.

“I was pretty stuck on not going to community college, I didn’t know if it’d be better for me to go after I had some real-world experience,” Sanders said. “She’s made me comfortable with the idea.”