The Penn Foster Blog

In April 2016, the White House announced the expansion of federal initiatives to connect students with in-demand jobs through free community college training.1 The America's Promise Job-Driven Training grants program will receive an additional $100 million to promote partnerships between community colleges and other training providers, employers, and public workforce systems to develop tuition-free training for middle-skilled and high-skilled positions in in-demand fields. Another $70 million will go toward the America's College Promise initiative to develop 27 new free community college programs. The success of initiatives such as this depends not only on funding, but also on effective promotional efforts to attract students and cultivate their interest. Here are some steps high school and college administrators and educators can take to help cultivate student interest in in-demand careers.

Smartphones have become part of the high school experience. Seventy-three percent of American teenagers now own smartphones, and one in four take their phones to school every day, according to Cell Phone City.1 Many educators are even welcoming their presence; 16 percent of schools now allow smartphones in the classroom, and educators are finding an increasing range of classroom applications for smartphone technology, including research and as an e-reader alternative. As high schools increasingly incorporate smartphone usage into the classroom, the phone usage behavior they help instill in students will begin to spill over into the workplace, making it important to teach students phone etiquette that will serve them in a workplace environment. Here are some phone etiquette lessons that high school educators can teach students to better prepare them for success in the workplace.

Your workforce board has a website, of course, but does it have a blog? Blogs can be used to post job hunting tips, job postings and internship opportunities. They can also be used to publicize your workforce board - for example, you could post articles that showcase services your center offers and your personnel. A well-maintained blog offers a number of compelling benefits to your workforce board; here are four of them:

When we profiled them earlier this year, Project YouthBuild had successfully partnered with Penn Foster to implement a blended learning solution that provided a new option for their young people to earn their high school diploma while creating pathways to college & career success. We recently checked-in with Project YouthBuild and found that they have continued to experience success with the program. At the end of the year, a cohort of 18 students who started the program, a record 93% have completed the program with nearly 75% of the graduates planning to pursue post-secondary education, with many graduates enrolling in the highly ranked Santa Fe Community College. Post-secondary programs these graduates plan to enroll in include, but are not limited to, automotive, allied health, technology, and business.

There has been a lot of conversation in the media about the "battle for talent." With turnover rates for foodservice employees already reaching 110%, the need to retain talent is greater than ever for restaurants. Following a review of the data from the recently published Restaurant Industry Report: Strategies for Reducing Turnover, I reflected on this growing challenge. Here are three approaches to keeping employees engaged and committed to your organization:

As we discussed in part one of the series, the term Power Skills encompasses both the personal effectiveness and workplace skills needed for professional success. To differentiate between the subsets of personal effectiveness skills, we define personal skills as those that are specific to the individual. On the other hand, people skills refer to how an individual interacts with others.

Last week Penn Foster had the honor of attending YouthBuild's 11th Annual Instructional Leadership Institute. This year's event, which took place from August 1-3, 2016 in Boston, MA, gathered together YouthBuild staff and educators from around the country to share best practices from the education field. This year's theme, "Everyone Leads, Everyone Educates" focused on strategies and approaches for YouthBuild program staff to lead and teach in ways that reach and empower all learners. In keeping with this theme, Penn Foster presented cutting-edge research on the impact of blended learning on non-traditional learners. Read on to learn about some of the best practices we discussed for implementing a blended learning program within a youth organization:

Ninety-two percent of job recruiters use social media to look for prospective hiring candidates, according to the latest annual Jobvite survey.1 This can make it easier for job seekers to connect with recruiters, but it can also make it easier for job candidates to make a bad first impression. Take, for instance, these stats from the Jobvite Social Recruiting survey:2

Blended learning programs - those that combine online and in-class teaching methods - have grown increasingly popular in recent years. According to the Evergreen Education Group's 2015 annual Keeping Pace with K-12 Digital Learning report, nearly all K-12 school districts around the country now use online learning to some degree.1 By 2019, half of all high school courses will be delivered over the Internet.2 Additionally, nearly one in four college students take at least one online learning course.3

Completing high school is challenging enough in ideal situations, but an increasing number of students are facing extracurricular responsibilities that make finishing high school even harder. Coming from a foster child background, having to work to support a family, growing up in a military family, and pregnancy are just some of the challenges that make finishing high school harder for many students. For instance, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30 percent of teenage girls who fail to complete high school cite pregnancy or parental responsibilities as the main reason.1 Among girls who have a child before age 18, only 40 percent finish high school.