Insights from a Pandemic: Reflections from the On Track to Career Success Project
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Date
2023-03
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Abstract
After extensive planning and work building multiple partnerships, the On Track to Career Success (OTCS) project was launched in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and New Orleans, Louisiana in early 2020. The OTCS project works with partner schools and communities to create a framework to support all students, including the most marginalized, on a path to high school graduation, post-secondary schooling and/or training, and a career with a family-supporting wage.
Description
After extensive planning and work building multiple partnerships, the On Track to Career Success (OTCS) project was launched in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and New Orleans, Louisiana in early 2020. The OTCS project works with partner schools and communities to create a framework to support all students, including the most marginalized, on a path to high school graduation, post-secondary schooling and/or training, and a career with a family-supporting wage. At about the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and disrupted so much of our lives. Carefully designed plans were pushed aside amid new health restrictions. The next two years were defined by uncertainty and stress, as schools moved to online instruction and then hybrid schooling, forcing educators, nonprofit partners, and community members across the country to reimagine education. Such challenges were perhaps steeper at the OTCS schools, which serve Black, indigenous, and other people of color in historically underserved communities that were among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Many students, teachers, and community members had family members who became seriously ill or died. One potential partner school in New Mexico ended up being converted into a field hospital for its community. To be certain, the first two years of the OTCS project did not unfold as planned. However, program implementation did proceed — amid the drastically changed education environment — and important lessons emerged that helped move the work forward. Five key insights gleaned from the project’s first two years are summarized here and will be of value to educators, funders interested in systemic educational reform, workforce providers, researchers, and others.
Keywords
On Track to Career Success, Pandemic Insights