The workforce landscape is constantly evolving whereas our education system has been nearly unchanged for decades.  We all read startling headlines such as Students are being prepared for jobs that no longer exist and wonder, how is it that we can’t seem to catch up? It’s not about lacking passion. The passion is there and we see it day after day in our educators. The problem lies in both knowing what steps to take and then taking real action.

Last week, our team from The Myers-Briggs Company hosted the Florida K2Career Summit at Tallahassee Community College’s Center for Innovation, gathering representatives and leaders from industry, education, and government to address innovation in education and workforce development. Highlights during the summit included Project Success, sponsored by the US Department of Education, aimed at improving institutional performance and student outcomes at Minority Serving Institutions and our K12 partner from Cajon Valley Union School District. With a mission of “Happy kids, healthy relationships, on a path to gainful employment,” the World of Work is the integrated framework for schools in Cajon Valley.

As a group, we spent the Summit articulating the typical student’s “K2Career Journey” and used a graphic illustrator to visualize what we now call the “Education and Workforce Superhighway”. We uncovered several important key findings, starting with the fact that parental engagement and involvement are foundational to student success. Helping them to become more self-aware and understand the value of education as it relates to career pathways for their children is a crucial piece. Among our learnings we realized the following:

• Education needs to support the knowledge economy of the future by rewarding teachers and students for learning critical thinking, creative processes, and adaptability.
• We need to support exploration by destigmatizing help-seeking behavior that enables students to access resources, ask questions, be curious, and embrace failure as a key to success.
• When students understand their personal value and strengths, as well as how they learn, they become empowered to self-advocate through a new sense of agency and ownership over their K2Career journey.
• We need to help students, parents, and the community envision economic opportunities for their future possible selves, powered by education.

We would like to thank the amazing group of dedicated thought leaders who participated in the summit and we look forward to working towards a better future!

Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd), National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE), The US Department of Education- Federal Student Aid, Trellis Company, Cajon Valley Union School District, The Lumina Foundation, The Florida Council of 100, Staff of the Florida House of Representatives, The Florida Chamber of Commerce, CareerSource Florida, Complete Florida, Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, Florida School Boards Association, Florida Board of Governors and Tallahassee Community College.