From Schoolyard to Workplace – Successfully

Aloha, it’s Rosa. I am writing for Teaching with Aloha today, to ask you to enroll in a critically important goal with me.

I ask you to get involved in whatever way you can within your own circle of influence, even if that ‘circle’ is as small and tight as the realistic coaching conversation between you as teacher and one of your students. I’ve been talking to many of them, and they are feeling very alone. Many are not turning to their parents for help, for they are watching them struggle in battles of their own.

Our Common Goal: Successfully Transition Students from School to Work

Your circle of influence is actually much bigger than you may think.

We, in both education and business, must forge a better partnership in aggressively achieving our common goal. We must join forces so we in business can better welcome the students you graduate, effectively integrating them into our working communities quickly and smoothly.

This transition, from a place of early learning to a place of Ho‘ohana at work, does not happen as successfully as we need it to happen. If we use present U.S. employment numbers as a measurement, it does not happen for nearly half of those who graduate:

“46% of those aged 16 – 24 in the U.S. population do not have jobs – this is their lowest level of employment since records were kept in 1948.”
—from BusinessWeek, The Lost Generation by Peter Coy

This statistic is unacceptable, and even more alarming? Many anticipate it will get worse.

The youngest members of our workforce are struggling to belong. Those of you on college campuses everywhere are feeling the over-crowding as students of all ages retreat back into school: Students once eager to graduate now parlay their available finances (and bulging student loans) into the educational dabbling that is not passionate learning, but a purposeful delay tactic:

“My daughter is in a great college and is scared to death of graduating because she knows there’s not really a future for her even with a degree.” —Shannon Esposito

“I have a cousin who is becoming what I call a professional student. He keeps switching majors because he is terrified of graduating.” —Chris Chartrand

Here is half of a fictional account I wrote for Talking Story this past Friday: It was a juxtaposition between someone with a healthy Sense of Workplace (what I have been calling the healthy sense of place defined by Ho‘ohana work) and this young man. Sadly, I keep hearing that this is not fiction at all…

The time ticked as 11:03am at the bottom corner of his computer screen.

That maddening restlessness moved him to slam his laptop shut to hibernate – again. He didn’t even bother closing any of the tabs, not caring if the machine struggled to understand the abrupt interruption or not.

What was the use of having the newest and most expensive mac Apple offered when it was so pathetically poor at holding his attention? He’d begged for it as the only graduation gift he wanted. What a waste of money. What a wasted wish.

It was too early for lunch, so that wasn’t his urge; he felt a far different hunger. Still, he walked to his fridge and grabbed a beer; it would dull this confusing boredom as it always had the past few months. He wondered how much longer it would work, for he couldn’t afford the hard stuff. Just as well. Whatever.

Summer had become autumn. It was beautiful outside, with the leaves turning color and a new crispness charging the air and quickening the pulse. His shades were drawn though, and he didn’t notice any of it. Didn’t see it, didn’t feel it. Not anymore.

Worse than the boredom, the nagging, brutal guilt suffocated much of whatever else he’d once felt. It consumed him and all his attentions nowadays; he just couldn’t concentrate on anything else. He was supposed to be an adult now. He was supposed to go to work every day, listen to some boss, pay taxes, contribute to society and all that crap. A college degree, graduating summa cum laude no less, hadn’t helped him one damn bit; he had done all he could to find a job – any job – and there was nothing. Nothing.

Pride wasn’t in his way – that feeling went away a long time ago and he’d gladly flip burgers, haul trash, anything; the lack of possibility was the problem. If it was still there, he no longer could see it. He could barely force himself to get out and keep looking. This morning was one he hadn’t, and he was getting alarmingly close to stopping altogether.

You play by the rules, get good grades, stay out of trouble and do everything your parents and teachers tell you to do, then the economy tanks, you can’t catch any break at all much less a decent one, and life sucks.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

This is what Peter Coy called the “scarring of a generation” in that BusinessWeek feature:

“The freshness and vitality young people bring to the workplace is missing. Tomorrow’s would-be star employees are on the sidelines, deprived of experience and losing motivation… Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.”
—The Lost Generation —The continuing job crisis is hitting young people especially hard—damaging both their future and the economy

I want a happier ending for this story. I know you do too.

I have described one such better scenario in the rest of this story if you care to read it: Hibernation 2009 on Talking Story, and there are many more possibilities. All we have to do is proactively create them.

Last week, I wrote Share your Sense of [Work] Place as my Call to Action for managers everywhere, and I suggested several ideas they can get started with. I published it on Talking Story, on Say “Alaka‘i” at The Honolulu Advertiser (where Dean weighed in with some thoughts), for our Managing with Aloha group on LinkedIn, and I continue to tweet and talk about it to any/all who will listen. I am not going to stop. I fully intend to work this into my presentations to come as I continue to bring the Managing with Aloha mission to managers and leaders poised for action.

This, is your Call to Action. What ideas can we in the Teaching with Aloha community initiate and make happen?

What can you do?

1. To start, email this page to every teacher and every business person you know. Stumble it, Digg it, Tweet it… do whatever you can to share it, enrolling others in our common goal.

2. Take the links I have offered within this posting, and get familiar with this crisis – for that is what it is – and get emotional about it, for it affects you directly. Talk to others affected (it will not be hard to find them) and put the faces of your community on this issue.

3. Help us get a conversation going right here: What ideas can we talk about, and share with each other?

4. Start a conversation in your own circle of influence, and within your other tribes, and make this goal-setting, and goal-working actively happen in your community wherever it may be. Be a leader: Activate your own team.

5. Offer your mentorship to students who should be poised to enter the workforce (refer to Dean’s mentoring series): They often have a difficult time speaking to their parents about this, retreating from them instead, for like the young man in my story, they feel they should be on their own now.

6. Partner with the business people in your community. Teach them about the Sense of Workplace concept. Work together.

7. Let Dean and I know how else we can help.

Mahalo nui loa. Thank you for reading, and for getting involved. I know we can affect the change we need to see happen.

We Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.
With much aloha,
Rosa

Photo Credit: Working Late on Flickr by Thomas Rockstar

Tagged as: Call to Action, School Transitions, Sense of Workplace, Workforce Demographics