Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The goal isn’t just to help students get good grades. The staff at Lunenburg County Public Schools has been working to get beyond that, to help students get ready for the real world outside of the classroom. And their progress was recognized by the Virginia School Boards Association (VSBA) this month, as Lunenburg was one of just 11 districts across the state to receive an Excellence in Workforce Readiness Award.

Created in 2018 by the VSBA Task Force on Workforce Readiness, this awards program is meant to highlight programs happening in Virginia public schools, work that’s been proven to help get students ready to enter the workforce. Lunenburg was the only district in Central or Southside Virginia to earn an award in that category.

“We just look for projects and get as creative as we can, trying to utilize our community partners and find ways for students to do work-based learning,” said Lunenburg Superintendent Dr. Sharon Stanislas.

What the district has found is that when they provide students with hands-on experiences, it helps them make a connection and better understand what they like or don’t like about a certain career path. It’s also helped them in the classroom itself, making it easier to understand and remember some core concepts.

The specific project Lunenburg was praised for involved their work with the county’s animal shelter, but the work-based learning goes beyond that. Coming up this semester, Stanislas said carpentry classes will be working with Kenbridge Construction Company to build playhouses. The district is also partnering with the Chamber of Commerce, with students designing a new website for the group and updating it on a regular basis. Teachers for Tomorrow students, those who have expressed interest in teaching, worked this past Spring semester at Victoria Elementary, providing assistance as teacher aides and learning what goes on in a regular day to prep for and work in the classroom.

MAKING THIS A FOCUS

The concept is one Stanislas and her staff base their work around.

“We just take the courses that we offer and look for opportunities to connect them with real life work experiences, so they can transfer that learning beyond the classroom,” Stanislas said. “Maybe it’ll even inspire them to turn it into a career or at least offer tools to help find employment once they’ve graduated.”

She praised the teachers and career tech staff, for constantly looking at new ways to make this work. A key part is the connections formed with outside companies, which makes the effort affordable for a rural school district. With budgets always a concern, forming partnerships helps the district keep this hands-on learning going.

“They’re always at the drawing board, trying to figure out, ok, what projects can we do as a class that give students real life work experience?” Stanislas said of her teachers and staff. This specific project that was recognized involved 80 marketing students working on a social media campaign to help increase adoption rates. The goal was also to let people know they can get help with feeding pets. The shelter is a nonprofit. They can help get pet food for the owner or cat litter, whatever the need is. It helped the shelter increase adoption rates and gave those marketing students a taste of how to run their own ad campaign.

“A lot of pieces to the puzzle, a lot of people worked together to make this happen,” Stanislas said of the VSBA award. “It was exciting. I’m very proud of the work the staff and students, in conjunction with community partners, worked to make happen.” And things aren’t slowing down. With a new semester right around the corner, Stanislas said her team will keep working to find more options for their students.

“We just continue to look at ways they can create opportunities for students to have work based learning experiences, utilizing those connections we have,” she said.