S6:E10 - Connecting Students and Employers with the Career Carousel

You are listening to the Growing Small Towns Show, a podcast dedicated to supporting you, the person who really cares about the future of your small town. We believe when people get better, everything gets better, and our episodes offer the ideas and actions that prioritize people and small communities. Thank you for listening. We're so glad you're here. Hello, hello, hello. It is your host, Rebecca Endum. I am coming at you at the end of a very long day. And I'm excited though, because I'm— I decided that I wanted to record this on the same day it happened because we tested out a cool idea today and it went I mean, it went really well. We all, we all feel like, uh, because it was the first time we ever did it. And as you know, with anything that you try for the first time, it's mostly just a giant lesson in learning, right? Uh, but this morning we hosted, um, what we called a career carousel where we identified, well, we didn't identify them. I should, I should back up. So also the we, is me here at Growing Small Towns, our relocation specialist, and our Chamber of Commerce. We are the host on the business or community side of the equation. And we worked collaboratively, like really collaboratively with our school. And here in Oaks, we are fortunate to have a career and technical education center. Center called the Southeast Region Career and Technology Center, SRCTC, where students can go out and get that hands-on learning that is so important, right? Especially for rural communities. Well, in all towns, but it's really, we're really lucky to have such a rich educational extension basically to our traditional school system. Here in Oaks. At SRCTC, they have a dedicated position called the Work-Based Learning Coordinator. So on the school side of it, it was Teresa, the Work-Based Learning Coordinator, and then our school counselor, Mr. Wentworth, and our high school English teacher, Mrs. Halfke. She's been teaching and kind of, one of the things that she's been doing through her her classroom and kind of, I honestly, I have to be honest, I don't really know how this got to be under her purview. Before Teresa took her position as Work-Based Learning Coordinator, Mrs. Hafke was helping students find some placement in businesses in the community. So all of these people came together and said, how do we create an experience where our students get to interact with the businesses with a bit of a controlled environment, how do we engage our employers to really think about work-based learning, whether it's job shadowing, internships, hiring them for part-time positions, all ultimately with the idea of developing our own internal workforce development or workforce pipeline, right? Oaks as a community right now, again, our fair little Oaks in Southeast North Dakota, a town of 1,800 people, right? We have seen such an interesting return, interesting, excuse me, return of young people and young, like in their 20s young. Okay, so they're leaving, going, maybe getting some college, maybe getting just some life experience, whatever. They're leaving and they're returning and they're coming back and they're taking jobs at our local businesses. They're returning to start their own businesses. And we just think that the, I mean, we all know that the world is changing so fast that a lot of the jobs that these students, so today we really had just juniors and seniors that participated in this, but the world that we're preparing them for is, we don't even know what it's going to look like in some respects. The jobs that these students are preparing for We don't even know if they exist yet. Like, these are real truths for, for all of our communities. And so it's challenging. And you know, one of the things I, you know, and from my lens, through my lens as a, as a mom, as a business owner, and then of course as like doing organizational development, working with companies on culture and working on, working on healthy, transparent, and open communication for for example, I look sometimes at our youth and I see hope and I see optimism, and sometimes I also just get a concern over interpersonal skills and just, you know, and it's not because they're dumb and it's not because, you know, they shouldn't know better, they're just not practiced at it, right? So our Work-Based Learning Coordinator, Teresa, this is part of her role, right? Like, there's been funding set aside. So if you're like, how did this get funded? I'll tell you. So the work-based learning coordinator is funded through an allocation at the state level for continuing education, CTE. That's the program that it falls under. I believe it's a function of our Department of Public Instruction. That might not be true, but the allocation for sure came through CTE. But she's, you know, she's part, she's a part-time employee. And so ultimately though, like we have tried numerous different things over the years to try to better engage, you know, the school and the, and the business community. We have a very strong and healthy economy in our community with truly just a diverse and wide range of businesses represented in sectors and in size and, and all the things. And so we had tried traditional job fairs. Um, we, we have like different groups have kind of tried to kind of resurrect and make mentorship slash job shadowing slash interning a thing. And it just has never really felt like a program. So, um, and, and this, we don't know, you know, maybe this, this won't be the thing either, but this thing that we tried today just there's enough, there was enough structure to it that I wanna share it with you. I wanna share what we did, how we did it. Um, and then I'm so excited to share with you that my oldest child, so if you've all listened to the episode with my middle child, my younger son of, um, the middle of my 3 children, uh, he had come on and talked about the Community. My oldest son came on today. He participated in this and so he was willing to share I mean, you guys, I got a whole 8 minutes of his time, but he's not like a super chatty kid, but he had come in. I asked him if he'd come, he said he would. And some of the things he shared, it's just good perspective because he's a student, he's a kid, he's part of what we're trying to reach, right? So we decided, again, kind of collaboratively, it does require everybody's participation because we held it here in our facility. So that means it was off campus. So the first thing is that the school had to agree that they would bring the juniors and seniors offsite. It required a bus. I mean, we had to do that. But luckily our guidance counselor, Mr. Wentworth, also has a CDL. Thank you, Mr. Wentworth. And so he was like, yeah, this is not a problem. So, but then we just talked about like, how do we give these kids a safe, learning lab kind of an environment for them to practice having organic conversations with employers. So they're not officially interviewing, they're not coming in for a specific job. So the goals were, you know, two, like, there were several layered goals. One just being that, like, how do we give them an opportunity to sit across from local people that are real people in their community and practice those skills? The second was how do we help them understand and know more about the opportunities that exist here, whether it's opportunities for employment down the road, opportunities for tuition reimbursement programs or support if you would decide to come back. Like, do any of these businesses pay for schooling? And some of them do. We also have a community match program that our economic development group will offer. I'll just share it. They'll come alongside a business and match up to $2,500 of tuition reimbursement for a student that's going to school and they're coming back to the community. That's a really cool thing. Like, again, it's showing these kids that we want them back or to never leave if they don't need specialized learning, right? Like, what would it look like to enter the workforce right outta high school? So, and then the third level or kind of goal, I would say anyway, on the employer side is to potentially connect them with future talent. And so we have in our, between our junior and senior classes here at Oaks Public School, we have 68 students. After we did today, 52 of them participated, which we were like, is that good? Is that bad? We don't know. There was some other things, like there's going to be conflicts and stuff. Overall, we were pretty pleased with 52 students. Our Chamber of Commerce, Kasia, who, she does such a fantastic job, she reached out. We had 14 employers represented in the room. So you'll see in the pictures that accompany this episode, we set up the room with 7 tables on each side of a semicircle with like entrance points at the ends so that the employers were were on the outside. And I just have to tell you, like, even down to this detail was so fun. We put 'em in a circle 'cause we called it a carousel. And what was happening then is that we had about a half hour with each half of the students. I'll tell you kind of what the other half did in a moment, but they rotated every 4 minutes. So they talked to 6 employers. So no, no one student would ever be able to talk to 14 employers because even 4 minutes was kind of fast. And you'll hear Andrew kind of talk about that. So it was really funny. So you have the inside of the circle where, you know, the people have their, they're facing kind of out, and then the outside of the circle where they're facing in. And even this detail was fun. So Kasia was also, she was formerly a teacher and she was just like, "Oh, you can't have the students on the outside because then they can see each other. Have them facing, have them face, have them be on the inside and face out so they can only see the employers." I was like, You're so smart. So that was how the room was set up. And we took the groups in halves. And so the first half did the actual interviewing and the second half, they went upstairs to our separate space and we just talked about where to find local jobs in our community. We pulled up our website, Kasha kind of walked them through and showed them the job board. They all got, a little card, a little business card with a QR code on it to put our community app on their phones because our school, of course, we're in North Dakota, they can't have cell phones in school. So they didn't have their cell phones on them. So we had them take that back so they would get that on their phone 'cause that has the job board, you know, right at their fingertips too. We had some employers have some additional information either about open jobs or, you know, either scholarships, scholarship opportunities, or tuition reimbursement programs, anything that would help these kids potentially choose them. Our employers brought that material, so that was all upstairs. We had 2 extra people, and this was kind of fun. We had 2 extra people from our local hospital system, so CHI. One was an OT and one is a nurse. They both were graduates from our high school, And they just talked about their journey through healthcare and just that healthcare is not as limiting or limited as you might think it is. Also that rural communities are a great place to do it. So the students had that opportunity and they also then had time to do their, you know, post-activity reflections. And we also had them write thank you cards. They could decide which employer, it had to be an employer that they actually spoke to. So they wrote a directed, thank you card to the employer. So we did that this morning. We served muffins, we served coffee, 14 employers, 54 or 52 students, 2 hours, and a lot of lessons learned. Something else Andrew shared with me, I was, and in a moment here we'll cut to him and you can kind of hear him talk through what he enjoyed about it. And I think it's just valuable because he's a kid. Like, yes, he's my kid. You're going to hear real quickly that we're very different humans. And that's because is that not how it goes? One of the things he shared with me, and he, he, I'll tell you what he actually said. He's like, one of your questions felt like I only had one answer you wanted to hear. And I was like, well, yeah, it's called a leading question. And I totally do that. I don't normally to my guests. With him, I kind of did. But I, And then he's like, but the thing is, I said, was it the last one where I asked, like, would you encourage our listeners to do this? He's like, yeah, it was totally that question. I said, well, what would, what did you wanna say? And he's like, well, the thing is a lot of kids like really were griping about going. He said like, even kids that, that, you know, like are, are like good students were like standing in the lobby waiting to get on the bus and they're like, ugh, why do we have to do this? And then he's like, "But then they went and they really enjoyed it. Like enjoyed it more than they thought they would." And I just said to him, I'm like, "Well, I'm totally gonna tell the audience that that's what you said to me." I said, "Why didn't you say that?" He's like, "I don't know, I just wasn't sure if I should." So it's really interesting 'cause what he said was, "I just wish more kids would have an open mind." And I laughed 'cause I was like, "Dude, closed-minded kids can sometimes grow up to be closed-minded adults. It's not something everybody grows out of." I said, I'm like, I'm going to share that with the audience because I think they need to hear that, that as hard as it can be sometimes to try new things, as hard as it can be especially to engage students in trying new things, everybody learns when we try, and especially when we try something we've never done before. The other thing that we did was we had an employer reflection kind of feedback form. Form. We had a, a student reflection feedback form and, you know, we got, we got helpful things like how would we do it better? So you'll hear Andrew share some of that. I'm not gonna steal his thunder. Um, but I think like what's very cool about this too is there's just a couple more things I, I wanna share because this was something that just happened today and I thought I wanna share something practical like this. And if nothing else, I hope it gives you just like a, a hit of inspiration of what this could look like in your community, 'cause it doesn't have to look exactly like this. I think it's a matter of just saying, what connections aren't happening, right? Or like, who needs to know each other that doesn't know each other? And in this case for us, it was, you know, giving that tangible knowledge to our students in a way that wasn't forced. I mean, it was forced, obviously, they're getting up and they're moving, but the pressure was low and yet it wasn't. You'll hear Andrew talk about this a little bit. Like we didn't host this at the school and there was clear reasons for that. And I'm really, I'm glad that we stuck with that as a, as a, as a idea. The, the two teachers involved were absolutely, they totally agreed. And, and I think the thing too, you know, the other big thing for me I, I took away from this is that out of 52 students, Even if half of them are like, what a waste of time, all we're looking for is one student to have their mind completely opened by the experience. You know, it's like, that's even true of every event you host, everything that you offer, everything you try in your community. I literally could get choked up about this because I think sometimes we forget the power of one human. One human having a meaningful connection or making a meaningful connection, learning something they didn't know before. We make everything is about numbers. Like the more numbers, the better. That's all vanity because it doesn't always communicate transformation. It doesn't always communicate like a bit of learning actually embedding, right, and changing a person. It doesn't, there's, those things are hard to measure. They're almost always qualitative and they matter. So it was so exciting to have, there were a couple kids that said, "I loved this," like to us, which was really special. And also there is nothing like hearing our two teachers that were here saying, I literally had to take a picture of her because she's smiling and chatting and she's never like that. Or, I didn't think that student was going to speak at all, and look what that student's doing. So some of it is just really recognizing that the goal is just to give them a safe place to try, and that's what this was. And so our first ever career carousel was honestly, in our minds, in our hearts, it was a hit. And so, In a moment here, you're going to hear from Andrew, and he shares kind of his reflections. But there's kind of two other things I want to share. So earlier this week, I had a different podcast interview. And so if you're like an avid listener to our show, you'll hear this. Rebecca shared the phrase like, we have to ask ourselves who we're building our community for. Is it something that our grandparents would be proud of, or something that our grandchildren will be proud of. And it's not to say that grandparents don't matter, right? It's recognizing that everything we're deciding today is gonna impact who comes next. And we want to continue to think about the evolution that has to happen, the progress, the innovation, the creativity, the forward movement, and the change, and the progress that has to happen to meet the needs of who comes behind us. And I feel like that's what today was about, right? It's not doing everything in a super traditional way, and it's listening to kids when they talk to you, because kids are so smart. And even if you feel like they're not smart at all, Rebecca, what are you talking about? They are the future. And so we have to figure out how to meet them where they're at. The other thing I want to share is that one of the most, most, to me, impactful things about this is that now these 14— and there were more than 14 people representing the employers, there were 14 employers represented. Some of them had a couple or even more reps from each of their places of business. But these people that really connected with a student, now when that student casually runs into them at the grocery store, it's another connection. That they've made. If the student shared something about themselves, about their interests or about their desires or whatever, that employer had an opportunity to say, "Hey, have you talked to so-and-so?" Or, "Hey, have you heard of this program or that thing or this thing?" They were able to connect with, you know, person to person. And yesterday, here in town, we had the distinct pleasure of having Pat Bertinelli, He's been on our podcast before. He's the, currently he's the executive director of Job Service of North Dakota, but just a dynamo of a guy and just like the best guy you'd ever meet. He was here and he did a presentation with the students and he had shared with us that, and he did some business visits. It was just a great day having Pat here. But he had shared that in response to the whole like, Why would I do that, right? When people are talking about job shadowing, especially job shadowing where you maybe aren't getting any value out of that student, right? That student is just there to observe and kind of understand your business. And when people are resistant to that because it's work, because let's be real, it's work on the part of employers. It's work to bring a student on site, whether they're job shadowing, whether they're interning, Sometimes even if it's a part-time job situation, like it can be a lot of work to train up somebody that's never been in the workforce at all. And so there have been employers over the years that Pat's done this work and they have said to him, "Why would I do that?" And what he replies to them is, "Can you think of a person who gave you a hand?" along the way in your journey. That's what this is. You have that opportunity to do that for another person. Where would you be without so-and-so? Where, you know, where would you be if this connection hadn't happened? And I'm telling you, like, for me, I think about my life and I think about the fact that I get to do this work, like what I'm doing right now. I get to do cool stuff in this town, in a, in a building that raised me by people who raised me. Like, I'm getting I'm super emo about this, but like, if that's not what the purpose of this is, like, what are we even doing, right? Think about how many people have helped me, supported me, cheered me on, you know, helped me when I'm struggling. Like, we get to do that and we get to show these students that we care. And I think sometimes it's really important that they feel that from somebody outside of their home and outside of the school. Like, the school was a big piece of this without question, But they saw, they felt the support of me, of Kasia, of TJ, of Teresa as the team that was kind of hosting them here. And all of the employers, all the people that spent their time today just making a rich learning, active learning environment for the students. They felt that, they felt the care. And yeah, did every single one of them walk away feeling this way, like this ooey and gooey about it? Absolutely not. But I know without question that some of those students are going home tonight and they're telling their parents about what they experienced today. And that makes me so proud. I'm so proud of us. And because it was a successful day, I always wanna share things that are working for us here in the hopes that you'll do the same. So if doing a career carousel or something like this is something you're interested in and you have any questions about any of the other stuff, like how we, you know, whatever logistics I might have neglected to share, please do not hesitate to reach out. We are always willing to share what works and share the lessons learned because that's part of how we get through this stuff, right? We're not supposed to be doing it all by ourselves. So friends, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to me and my son. We prerecorded that. He came in right before. I had a pocket of time, guys, I took it. These are his reflections of the day. Again, thanks for being here. Thanks for doing what you're doing, and thanks for trying to make your community better in the way that you can. You don't have to be everything to everyone, guys. That's such an important part of this too. Just as much as our students have unique journeys, you have unique skills and gifts. I hope that this show inspires you to show up using those things in the best way that you can. Because what I don't wanna see happen is, um, people get burnt out because they're trying to be everything to everyone cuz it's just not sustainable. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for listening. Uh, and enjoy this reflection from my oldest son, Andrew Thomas. We'll see you soon. The Growing Small Town Show is recorded locally at the Growing Small Growing Small Towns podcast studio located in Oakes, North Dakota. It's produced by Pheasant Canteen Studio in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with marketing support from Cassidy Johnston in Canyon City, Colorado. Our intro music was created and produced exclusively for Growing Small Towns by James Bergman, singer and songwriter from Fargo, North Dakota. Local and small, it's what we support and it's who we love. Get your community a shout out on the podcast. Call 701-203-3337 and share your small town success that you just don't feel is being celebrated quite enough, and let us shout you out. You can also share your biggest people challenge, and we'll dedicate an episode to offering ideas to help. Hell, you can basically tell us anything and we'll do what we can to answer. We can't wait to hear from you. Hey, Andrew Thomas, welcome to the Growing Small Towns show.

Hello.

I'm really happy you're here. So let's just get right into it. So this morning you and your classmates participated in our first ever career carousel. We were just, just talking about it with Kasha, the chamber director. Just right off, overall, what were your thoughts about it?

Um, you definitely need more time per, uh, business.

Well, yeah, okay, let's— we'll come to that in a minute. We'll come to like, what should we do differently? But like, you know, you— your class came first, so you were part of the first group to do the interviews. What did you— I mean, what did you think? You didn't know what you were gonna— you guys really didn't know what you were walking into.

Mm-hmm.

Which, that's some of the stuff we can do better too, right? What was, what was the experience like? Well, what was something, let's, I'll try to give you a, a question that you can answer a little bit more clearly. Like, what was, was there something that surprised you or like that you didn't expect that was pleasant about the experience?

Um, I felt like I actually learned how the businesses operated and what their like day-to-days look like and how you can get that job and how much schooling you need for it, and if you need schooling for it. And just, you learn like how the job actually works.

Yeah. Okay. Was that, was that, do you feel like that came out because of the questions you asked?

No, I felt like the, the businesses were prepared to tell you it.

Yeah. So what was, what was something just maybe, what was some of the surprising thing or some of the surprising things that you heard that maybe you didn't expect, where that they were, like the employers were just really forthcoming about? Some of what you shared, like to me and Kasha just a few minutes ago, especially related to schooling, what was kind of the message that you kept hearing from some of the employers?

That if you don't know what you're going to college for, then take your time and really figure out what you want to do. Because there's multiple times that the employers have said that they went to college for, or they switched their majors a ton of times and they still don't even use the major they got to the job they do now.

Right, right. And I think that's one of the biggest things that we're really seeing with the employers that were here. And there was different ages. There was definitely employers represented in the career carousel that are younger than me, right? But we talked a lot about the fact that there used to be a time where you couldn't get a job, like a professional-level job, without at least a 2-year associate's degree or bachelor's degree. And you kind of heard over and over from the employers that that wasn't exactly the case. Yeah. Yeah? OK, let's move to what you would have us do differently. Now that the audience will have already heard, now I will have already told them kind of what we did, what we what we plan to do, why we did it, all of that stuff. But as, as a student, a junior, um, what should we have done differently? So more time was one thing. We totally get that.

Yep, definitely a little more time. Um, and then just picking what you want to do.

Yeah, maybe picking who you want to visit with.

Yeah, definitely. Because like, there's just a few things that some of the girls in my grade just like, they didn't want to go talk to Truck and trailer.

Yeah, or some of the manufacturing places. So here's one thing I wanted to ask you, and maybe you can just tell me in real time like what you think about it. But what we had kind of talked about was what if, because, okay, because part of it is that the design was that maybe you would be talking to an employer that you maybe wouldn't be interested in working with. There's still something valuable that comes from learning about that business in our community, right? So after you guys left, the employers, there was a little downtime, right? When you guys went to the school and the seniors came back, one of the employers had said maybe there just needs to be like an additional time where if students didn't get to sit down with one of the employers they're interested in, that there'd be time built in for that.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

Yeah, and then I mean, if you were, as a student, if you were like, "No, I'm good," then we'd have to figure out what to do with you, but that was something that was suggested. Maybe, yeah. You know, yeah, 'cause part of it too, like the goal, one of the primary goals was to, give you guys, um, a pretty risk-free environment to just practice having conversations with employers in town. And also just to build your awareness of who they were, but to give you that time just to have a conversation, right? It wasn't an interview exactly.

Yeah, but one more thing instead. Yeah, instead of like, uh, like, uh, what did I say, picking your interview, maybe we just make sure everyone gets through every single one.

Yeah, okay. Well, we would just need, we would just need the school to, to offer offer a lot more time, right? We did what we could with 2 hours. But yeah, I mean, all good feedback. It's just, it was fun because a lot of learning on all sides, right? Like we didn't know what to expect. The employers didn't really know for sure what to expect. We got really good feedback from the employers.

Cool.

You know, most of them were like, I'd totally participate in this again.

Good.

Let me just ask you this, like aside from this now, When you think about what other things you need from the school, let's say, for career planning, what could we do to help that? Like, one of the things we ask the businesses is like, would you be willing to go into the classroom and just talk a bit about your business? Is that helpful or was this setup better for that, do you think?

I think this setup was definitely better. I, I feel more engaged because I feel like you kind of have to be more engaged because you're, you're talking straight to them.

And right, like the one-on-one.

Yeah, they're talking straight to you. Definitely, definitely this because it doesn't get lost in the classroom.

Like it can get, yeah, if an employer comes in. Mm-hmm.

Like you definitely like have to listen and you can't just like zone out because like otherwise.

One of the, one of the things in planning this that the work-based learning coordinator, Teresa, had heard from a different person who had done something like this. They were really surprised that we weren't holding this at the school. They were surprised that we were holding it in like a Main Street space like this. What do you think about that? Would it have been more effective at the school? Or did you feel like it was different because you physically had to come here? Did it feel different?

I mean, our hope was that it would, but it definitely felt like, it felt organized and like, it felt like, it almost felt like the school wasn't putting it on in a way.

Yeah. Okay. And that was, that's a good thing, right? You mean that in a good way?

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like in the best way possible, I just feel like you went to like a different place. You didn't just walk down the stairs and go to this thing you had to go to. You kind of got to skip a little school. Go learn about a few businesses that are in your town.

Right. Yeah. We felt like the distractions are just higher in the school because you guys are so familiar with the school. Right. And you almost, it almost is treated like just any other day.

Yeah.

When stuff happens at the school and not to say that something should happen there. We get that.

But yeah.

Yeah. So what, well, yeah, what else? What else would you share about today? Anything else that you can think of? Kind of final takeaways? Because the people listening to this, you know, we're sharing this as a, hey, this was something we just did. We feel like it was pretty successful for a first round. Yeah, I definitely— And your perspective is super helpful because you're one of the students that participated.

I definitely enjoyed it and I feel like I learned a lot. About other businesses. I mean, some little things that, I mean, they tell you when you're talking to them about it and just how you get there. And I did not know that you only had to school, go to school for 2 years for radiology. Like, yeah, little things like that. It's just like, oh wow.

Yeah, that's, it's interesting, isn't it?

Yeah, when you think medical side, you immediately think 8 years of college.

Yeah, but right.

Radiology, you only need 2. So just things like that.

Well, I appreciate you hopping on here because I was hoping we could get a different perspective from, from just my own. And so, yeah, any final thoughts for our audience? Would you encourage people listening to this to do some version of this in their communities? Do you think it was— I mean, do you think it was that worthwhile? That to partner with the school to get students in front of employers, is it, is it that important, do you think, overall? Not just even for you, how about for the businesses? How about for the community overall?

I think that it is a great opportunity to see and learn and just gain knowledge.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Paul.

Yep. Thank you.

Okay. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. The last thing I want to share with you is that because we believe so much in the value of sharing what we've done and not making anybody start from scratch, in the show notes there is a link to a folder that contains all the documents we use to set this thing up. So you'll find copies of the interview questions that we gave ahead of time to both the employers and the students, the reflection or kind of feedback forms that we created and developed for the students and the employers. We'll share the flyer that we created, the communication that we used. We'll share all of it just so you have a place to start, because there's no reason for you to reinvent the wheel, and just hearing about it's not quite as easy as actually getting your hands on some stuff. We hope that this is helpful. And the other thing I neglected to share too that I think is an important piece of kind of the prep work is that in addition to all of the communication on the business side, Teresa actually did do working sessions in, so there was like a dedicated time slot. And I'm, I, I'll be honest, I'm not sure what class period this was, but last week she went into the school and did a little bit of prep with the students. So, you know, you heard me say to Andrew, like, you guys had no idea what you were walking into. Well, that's not entirely true. I mean, they knew what they were preparing for, but we did talk a little bit about it. Like one of the things that we really would encourage us to do next time, we hope this is an annual thing, is that there should actually be a grade attached to this. And so we would break it down and say, and this again, the students or the school would have to agree to this. So let me just, this is a big caveat here. We sat down immediately and said, okay, We made a big list of stuff that we would do different. So I wanna share that too. We would make this an assignment that actually has a grade attached to it and make sure that they, that there's two things that you could get 100% and if you go above and beyond some of these things, you could possibly get extra credit, okay? So this is just where our brains went. Like you should get, the bulk of the grade should be that you attend the thing. Then if you dress according to the standards, which just like the standards aren't gonna be like you have to wear a suit, right? Uh, but there's a standard. Um, then it's filling out a thank you card according to the standard and filling out a reflection according to the standard. And then the extra could be like you do wear a suit or you like, you step it up extra. Maybe you actually, um, these were just our ideas. I'm just sharing what our ideas were right off the bat. Um, maybe you, at you, you write 3 thank you cards instead of just 1. Maybe it's that you, you name, or you address it to an actual person, not just the business, but you say, you know, "Dear Tammy." She happened to be one of the names of one of the women that was here today as an employer. So that's one of the things that we would do too. But when Theresa went into the schools, she actually did some kind of mock interviewing. She gave them, She gave them some tools, hands-on learning tools, let them practice eye contact, shaking hands. As crazy as it sounds, those things like students need to actually hear and see those things and have it demonstrated to them and then let them practice it. It's not stuff that everybody knows anymore. It's just facts. So that's the other thing that we did. We wanted to offer a resource toolkit for this one because there was a lot that went into it, a lot of logistics, but we're proud of it. We want you to do it. We wanna hear how it goes. So check out the link in the show notes and then seriously send me a note. Let us know if you try this or if it just spurs you to do something similar. We wanna know. We always wanna hear your stories. So maybe as a close to this episode, I'll just share like, we always wanna hear what's working. We wanna hear great ideas. We wanna feature you on this show. We want to stay connected to generous people that share and understand that we all get better. A rising tide lifts all boats. That's— we want those people in our network. So please reach out to us. We would love to hear your story. Okay, happy employer and student connecting. We hope it goes as well for you as it did for us. Thanks for listening. We hope you loved this episode of the Growing Small Towns show. We encourage you to leave us messages at 701-203-3337. And be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at growingsmalltowns.org. In the meantime, keep doing what you can with what you have, right where you where you are. Your community needs you.

Because we are growing small towns. We are growing small towns. We're right here living our best lives. Crazy as it sounds, but we are growing small towns, growing small towns. We are growing small towns. We are growing small towns.