Instructional Support Work-Based Learning Skills Coach
Job Description
For Immediate Hire:
Background
NYC Skills Lab is an initiative funded by the GE Foundation and managed by the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Readiness. The purpose of NYC Skills Lab is to help educators and their partners – both youth employers and youth serving professionals – incorporate 21st century skills development into their work with students to prepare them for college and career success.
About the 21st Century Workforce Alliance
The 21st Century Workforce Alliance was launched in 2016 to enhance high school internship experiences through greater coordination between schools and worksites and a more explicit focus on 21st century skills development across these settings. To achieve this aim, the program’s objectives are to build the capacity of schools to:
- support students’ development and transfer of skills to their internship experiences.
- bridge in-school and out-of-school learning through the use of common skills language that supports transparency and intentionality around the skills students are developing.
Work-Based Learning Skills Coach Position
Schools accepted into the 21st Century Workforce Alliance have existing internship programs and desire to be more intentional about how they use internships as authentic developmental opportunities for students to build skills needed for college and career success. The Skills Coach will collaborate and support designated Project Leads – ie internship coordinators – to achieve the program objectives by supporting them to:
- identify where meaningful opportunities exist for students to practice skills in and out of school.
- choose effective methods for facilitating students’ practice, reflection, and meaning-making in the course of their skills development.
- provide constructive real-time feedback to students and worksite supervisors.
- leverage grant funds to pursue initiatives that will support students development of skills.
- integrate school and worksite activities into a single unified program that provides students with intentional skill-building experiences that reinforce one another.
This support will occur through monthly one-on-one coaching sessions as well as quarterly convenings of all Project Leads for practice-sharing and professional development.
Primary Responsibilities
Depending on the size of the cohort and program scope, the Skills Coach role will be a part-time or full-time consultant position, or it will transition from a part-time to a full-time consultant position. Candidates seeking either are encouraged to apply.
In the 2017-18 school year, the Skills Coach will work with up to 10 school Project Leads. S/he will meet monthly with every Project Lead for dedicated coaching time that is expected to support an arc of planning and implementation by which all Project Leads should meet their own related personal goals and the larger goals of the 21st Century Workforce Alliance. Specifically this work will require the Skills Coach to:
- ask precise questions of Project Leads both to gather data about their programs and practices for the sake of coaching and to push their own thinking.
- pinpoint each Project Lead’s program goals and support her/him to bring them to fruition, while being aware of external constraints.
- help Project Leads to develop their ability to provide one-on-one or group counseling as a practice to support students’ reflection on and deeper meaning-making with the skills.
- guide Project Leads to utilize various forms of assessment to inform students’ skills development and programmatic choices.
- shift Project Leads as necessary from a traditional content-based learning approach to one more concerned with the development and mastery of skills.
- hear and react to Project Leads’ ideas and products in real time and provide feedback that is tangible, actionable, and geared toward growth.
- co-create ideas and products with Project Leads to improve and enhance program development.
- organize and share knowledge with the cohort, provide collective opportunities for problem-solving, innovation, and development, and maintain a sense of cohort community.
- support Project Leads as they plan and execute work-based learning initiatives with grant funds.
- document funding usage and impact on student development of skills.
- interpret and frame the work while it occurs as expressions of NYC Skills Lab’s overall mission.
Work-Based Learning Skills Coach Qualifications & Selection Criteria
Ideal candidates will have a deep interest in leveraging coaching to build the capacity of schools to support students’ postsecondary readiness through meaningful and effective school-based workforce development programs. Additionally s/he:
- has meaningful and valuable experience working in public schools, preferably in a role requiring direct student services.
- has worked specifically in internship, college and career access, and/or extended learning programs.
- has experience engaging external private sector partners in public education or youth service organizations.
- has experience coaching teachers or other youth-serving professionals and can leverage her/his creativity as a conduit for other people’s needs and ideas.
- is flexible and adaptive, with an ability to handle large amounts of work with different stakeholders.
- grasps the viability and value of multiple solutions and can shape ideas without discarding them.
- wants to see 21st century skills applied across educational venues more explicitly and rigorously.
- believes strongly in creating equity of educational resources and opportunity for historically underserved students.
