The Foundations Program

Work Life Skills and Vocational Exploration

 

 

What is Foundations?

 

The Foundations Program was developed to provide an educational foundation in work life skills which will assist students in transitioning from high school to competitive employment or higher education. In addition to these lessons, students are also provided the opportunity to explore their personnel vocational interests as well as careers with in four key component areas, prominent to the Utica/Rome area.

 

The Foundations curriculum has been designed to accommodate a variety of learning levels as well as learning styles. Additionally, lessons are facilitated through the pedagogically proven methods of active participation, modeling, hands-on activities, creative arts, positive reinforcement, and specific praise. This innovative curriculum concentrates on two vocational areas, work life skills and vocational exploration. With in the work life skills component, students learn important skills that will enable them to excel at future employment endeavors.  Some of the topics discussed are personal care, attendance/punctuality, developing a positive attitude, anger management, workplace ethics, communication, job searching, resume writing, and interviewing, just to name a few.

 

Within the vocational exploration portion of the program, students explore a variety of careers that fall under four key components; hospitality, office/retail, industrial maintenance, and care giving. Throughout each of these components, students discover job titles, job descriptions, and safety procedures that would be expected by a prospective employer of each field. As the students explore each career field, they often participate in job tours at various businesses through out the community. In addition to these tours, students have the opportunity to complete various activities that allows them to gain some experience in tasks that fall under that specific field of employment.

 

Outside of the work life skills and vocational exploration, the students also gain new social perspectives from participating in the Foundations Program. By attending class on a college campus, these students are privy to situations and interactions, that they may not otherwise have the opportunity to experience. The students also gain a deeper sense of responsibility and independence as they begin to learn to navigate the campus on their own. From getting off the bus in the morning and to the classroom across campus, to going to the cafeteria during their 10 minute break periods, they begin to understand how and why it is important to be on time and responsible, independently. Additionally, students have the opportunity to meet a number of new people from a variety of places. Interactions occur with business people from the community and daily with the College Works students on campus. These encounters are in addition to the new classmates from other school districts which they are integrating with in their very own classroom, as well as the various college students maneuvering on the campus. What allowed many of these students to make these tremendous strides, was knowing that they had the security of returning to the safe and comfortable environment that the Foundations classroom provides.

 

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