A successful education and career path is like a tree. We see and admire the sturdy trunk, the spreading branches, the luxuriant canopy of leaves, and the delicious fruit. What we don’t see is everything that has taken place below the surface to grow the tree to its present size and strength. To enable the… Read more »
Category: Best Practices
Education with Purpose: A Paradigm Shift
Direction. Confidence. Marketable skills. Passion. All of these things are essential ingredients in a person’s lifelong success—and it’s the laudable goal of most educators in America to teach these attributes alongside their academic subjects. We want to help shape the next generation of intelligent, productive citizens who graduate with a bright future ahead. There’s no… Read more »
Be Brief
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” -– Mark Twain I know just how Twain felt. Short and sweet messages that still convey our full meaning are harder to craft than long, drawn-out treatises. (That’s why truly powerful, memorable taglines are so elusive: they sum up… Read more »
The Impact of Strategic Communication to Reach Your Audience
I’ve written before about what I call “the Rain Effect,” where you drip value messages onto your target audiences until they become saturated with the story and then act on that knowledge. These “drips” can be anything: postcards, billboards, brochures, letters, visits, career nights, showcases, community involvement events, radio spots, and any other way to… Read more »
TFS Founder’s Perspective: The Competitive Advantage of a Planning Culture
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” — Allan Lakein I’m convinced that the art of productive planning is largely unknown to many young people today…and many people my own age as well. If we don’t have a vision and corresponding plan for where we want to go, how will we ever get there? This… Read more »
Top Career Exploration Resource Websites
When it comes to educational choices and career direction, young people today don’t know what they don’t know. It’s not their fault; many times, they just haven’t encountered the full range of possibilities available to them. As educators and workforce development professionals, we have the opportunity to open their eyes to the many diverse and… Read more »
Recruiting More Right Students with the Career Tree
The Career Tree ignites the motivation of your current students, but it’s also an amazing recruitment tool. Yes, it’s the students already in your classroom who are interacting with the Tree daily and envisioning their future careers and lifestyles, but when they do this, it attracts more of the right students to your program. This… Read more »
Opening the Eyes of Parents
Before you can reach students, you have to reach their parents. If you’re trying to connect with young people on any level in the education and workforce development sectors, you may have experienced the challenge of gaining parental buy-in. Maybe it’s the value of career-focused education that they just don’t realize. Maybe you represent an… Read more »
Founder’s Perspective: Investing in an Enrollment and Retention Driven Culture
Getting more of the right students, in the right programs, for the right reasons: this has been my mantra for more years than I can remember. This is a goal everyone wants to reach, no matter how high or low their current enrollment and retention numbers. We all want to make a bigger difference for… Read more »
The Career Tree: Creating a Narrative That Changes the Game
What’s the Career Tree? I mean, what IS it? If you answer it’s a great wall graphic used in classrooms to motivate students to set goals—well, you’re partly right. But there’s so much more to it than that. The Career Tree is ultimately not a product; it’s a philosophy. It’s not just a classroom tool;… Read more »
