- 26% of high school students believe their future job hasn't been invented yet.

How should students prepare for a future that's unknown?

And what opportunities await them right here in Kansas City?

We'll be exploring these topics and more, in KCPT's Getting to Work Town Hall, a part of the American Graduate Initiative.

- [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of the public media initiative American Graduate, Getting to Work.

(upbeat music) - Welcome!

I'm Miles Sandler of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Thanks for joining us for a look at the future of work in Kansas City.

Joining us today are high school students, college students from across the metro.

Our group also includes a number of educators and other community members, including a few we would like to introduce to you right now.

Anita Davis is the workforce development program director for the Mid-America Regional Council, our regional convener for local governments.

Susan Wally is the president and CEO of PREP-KC, an organization dedicated to improving college and career readiness for local students.

Andre Davis is the business development executive for Built Interior Construction.

Construction is one of the most in-demand careers in the KC area.

And Dr. Kenny Rodrequez, the superintendent of Grandview Schools, and one of the 15 district leaders, a part of the Real World Learning Initiative that launched earlier this year.

An effort to provide each student the learning experience, they need to be prepared for life after high school.

I would love to first talk to you, Hannah.

Hannah, you have a unique role at your school.

So, many students have a job after high school but you're actually a store manager for All Things Independence, which is a student-operated business, right on the heart of Main Street within the Independence Square.

So please tell us a little bit more about what you do?

- Our business model, we create student spirit wear for all three of our Independence high schools.

- How has this role, this position actually helped prepare you for your next step in the future?

- Exploring all of the different types of business, I've being able to kind of eliminate marketing from my ideas of what I wanna do, I'm more interested in the finance aspects of business.

- Awesome, well I know that you've prepared a question and so I'd love you to read it out and then we'll have one of our community members address it.

- Knowing that 26% of jobs that I could hold haven't been created yet, what workforce skills do I need to start preparing on now to be ready for those jobs?

- Susan, I know that you think about this all the time.

- There are an array of skills that are called, sometimes are called competencies that are critical.

We used to call them soft skills but they are really not soft, the employers really value them and they are skills like the ability to analyze, pull in a lot of information, a lot of data, analyze it and draw a conclusion.

Sort of the analytics.

The thinking, ah habits and they are skills like the ability to collaborate with others to know when you should maybe lead on a team of people and when you can be part of the team and contribute on the team.

I think the third one I would mention but there are many more are really good communication skills so can you communicate your ideas in a compelling way that people want to follow you and engage with you around your ideas.

- What about you?

Is there a skill that you would feel like you have been honing as a student that's gonna be really important for your future?

- I've taken a lot of the engineering courses over the last, I have to say, six years.

I've been doing it since middle school.

Robotics, programming, I've worked in programs, 3D modeling programs and these are thing that I know will help me because my interest is in architecture and I've been to firms and they still use these programs that I'm using currently in school.

Now this will hep me when I get to that point where I want to join that workforce.

- That's great, thank you so much Noah.

We're gonna shift now to a question for Grant.

- How do schools need to change in order to meet the needs of the marketplace?

- [Miles] Dr. Rodrequez, how do you think students are best prepared for the marketplace?

- Well I think what we try to do is certainly start earlier and it's not just something that happens their junior and senior year.

We have things like second grade classes debating the value of video games and they stand up and actually have to form a construction argument and then listen to the other side and actually go back and re-evaluate their position and argue back.

So those kinds of things to be able to be creative but also take the data and understand what's happening and form those constructive thoughts really starts to benefit students the longer they do that.

Certainly putting them in groups, working in groups, the ability to do that, that's difficult to do even if you are an adult so certainly making sure that students have more of those opportunities and then once they do start to get into middle school and high school, providing them more of an opportunity to at least explore the opportunities that exist.

What do you wanna do?

What are your passions?

We want everyone of our students to have a path once they graduate from high school and if not, then we haven't done our job.

But part of that is exploring while they're in our high schools to where they can have the opportunity to explore and understand, "Nope, I don't wanna do that.

"I don't understand or don't want to do the marketing "side of things anymore, I know I don't wanna do that "so let me see what else is possible."

And then working more with our community and making sure that we have an opportunity to work with the businesses out in the field and so that we get that information for them and then getting our students out of our school to be in those settings.

- Dr. Rodrequez brought up something really important, exploration, right?

So I'd love to hear from any of y'all an experience you've had where you've had explored something and realized, "Hey, that was maybe something I love "or maybe something I didn't love."

- I'm currently a part of the PREP-KC Serna program.

It's where high school students can actually go over to a Serna campus and actually be actually learn computer science and then the second semester of their schooling they can actually get an internship at Serna.

And so this has been a chance for me to, I really had never thought exploring the field of computer science but just having this opportunity and being able to see what it's like, it's been sort of great to see that this is a career that I might wanna pursue in the future.

Absolutely, Traizen McKowen, you have also a very unique role in your school.

So you are part of a technology class?

That sounds pretty simple but you actually operate a real life help desk that actually supports students and lets them explore kind of options around technology.

So I'd love to just hear a little bit of what you do and how does that work?

- Yeah, so our program, it's called Tech Maintenance and I guess our main priority is taking in student's Chromebooks, school issued Chromebooks and fixing them but there's a lot more to it than that.

There's a big self-study aspect of it.

I'm working on coding and in this game development engine called Unity which is something I love doing and I've been exploring it for the past two years so this program is just providing me a great opportunity to kind of explore my interests and learn how to study something on my own.

- You say this gives you this time to kind of explore and study on your own, what is it like also having to assist other students?

- It's a great feeling that my fellow students can come in and ask me of help with something and I can turn around and figure out what the problem is and give to back to them.

- We're going to pivot to the student next to you.

Rhett Spell, you actually have a question.

- What do business leaders think about the present and future changes in the education system?

- Andre I'd love to go to you.

How do you address this question?

- So yeah what I would share with the educators, and I think these two get it, is no longer are you standing at a podium and really speaking to the kids.

Because it doesn't resonate with you.

You have different kind of things happening.

You have collaboration areas, You have students that are learning at a certain level working with each other.

Understand businesses operate the same way.

I don't have a desk, I work remotely.

I come into the office, I work at a coffee shop, I work from home.

I work at a company site.

But then we collaborate right.

So if you're taking someone that's in a cubicle, or someone that's in a classroom setting, where you have some of that up front, and you're teaching that way, and then they enter a career where it's collaborative there's a disconnect.

You don't function well in that environment.

So what I would say is continue, for educators continue going against the grain.

Continue to mirror what companies are doing.

Because if you mirror what companies are doing these kids, your kids, your students will be much better prepared.

They're better employed.

By the way, not everyone has all the ideas.

And it's okay to bring others into that equation and go "hey what do you think?"

It's okay to do that.

That's collaborative thinking.

And that's a lot of what the environment is today.

- You just heard from a business leader that says "we want you in there, we want you engaging."

Right, work doesn't look like it might have looked like 20 years ago.

So for you when has been a moment that learning came alive?

In maybe a high school setting, or outside of a high school setting.

So I'd be curious to hear that.

- I originally went into Northland Caps thinking that I wanted to be a radiologist I wanted to be in the hospital.

And then throughout the year I've kind of figured out that maybe I don't want to be a radiologist.

I want to be something else, and maybe not so much in the hospital.

I wanna be more hand on, and maybe more in the outpatient clinic.

And it's just it's taught us so much.

I mean I'm CPR certified and vitals signs certified.

I mean it's just crazy what I've learned throughout this program.

- That's amazing.

I love that.

We're gonna shift over, So TJ Oney you have a question.

- What are the in demand careers and jobs that are in need of workers?

- Anita - Yes, that is a great question And I think we've touched on a lot of the in demand careers and occupations so far.

So skilled trades and construction, we estimate that over the next five years there will be approximately 136,000 skilled trades occupations created.

Manufacturing, they're in huge demand for manufacturing.

Everything from sort of entry level occupations to middle skilled tech occupations, to welding.

And these are all occupations that you can get into with short terms, sort of stackable credentialed training programs, competency based programs that can move you into pretty decent wage pretty quickly.

Healthcare will always be in demand.

There will always be positions in healthcare whether that is from front office, medical records, sort of back office work to the clinical and technical positions within healthcare.

And then of course as we've all mentioned.

We have such rapidly advancing technology that we are gonna continually need individuals in web development, coding and programming, and software engineering, and computer science fields.

As well as database administration as we continue to look at everything that we can do in every industry around data.

We'll also be needing people in the field of cyber security.

There's huge risks whether that is on our mobile phone or our laptop devices, So cyber security is another in demand and growing field.

- Are you seeing young people staying in Kansas City, or are you seeing them leaving.

- You know that is a very interesting question, there is some work partially looking at that and trying to understand where young professionals have learned their sort of core competencies.

And in a sense there's some information that we're gathering around that about where our professionals are going.

So we do see that we have a little bit of brain drain.

I think that there are people that are leaving our region.

We're trying to understand why.

Is this because it's a better you know kind of cost of living.

Is it a better living environment?

Are there more industry and occupational opportunities?

Is it just a better wage?

But I do think that we also find that a lot of young people wanna stay and give back to the communities that they grew up in.

They're connected to Kansas City.

And there's a great opportunity as we've mentioned here for them to move into a lot of great roles here so, I'm excited to see a lot of the interest around developing our talent.

And all of the support that there is here in this community.

- And I'm curious when you think about taking that step into the workforce.

Where are you imagining?

Where are you exploring?

Where are you envisioning yourself landing?

- Over the course of this year and a little bit of last year I've been kind of inducted I guess into our school's film crew.

And with that we've been kind of able to go places in Kansas City that I really wouldn't have thought that I would have been able to go in high school.

So an example of this would be Omnilife VR which is right in the Crossroads District in Kansas City, which is something that I didn't even know existed until this year.

They're working in depth with using virtual reality to help with older patients struggling with dementia schizophrenia things like that.

And it's been really interesting to kind of learn about stuff like that because that just popped up here a couple years ago so seeing stuff like that really is, it's very interesting to me at least, being able to see jobs that you know I wouldn't have thought to be a possibility up until a couple years ago.

- Roman Birch we'd love to hear from you.

You are actually at the Career and Technical Center at Fort Osage.

You know, do you think that you're going to stay in the law enforcement space, or if not what do you think this is preparing you for?

- Personally I'm planning to, after high school, I'm going down and I'm going to become a Marine.

And if everything goes as planned I'll become a linguistics.

And after I come out of service I'm planning to go career, which is 20 years.

I'm planning on becoming maybe a Jackson County Park Ranger.

- I love it.

That's, that is a plan.

Thank you Roman so much for sharing.

I wanna ask the group a question around, kind of opportunities.

So we know that opportunities are not always equally distributed.

How do we get to a place where everybody has those type of opportunities.

- I believe when we start employment programs like we've been talking about.

And more and more kids join up, they'll understand that there are entry level positions.

And there are opportunities in which they don't have to go to college for 13 years just do do.

I think that there is opportunity there is space for the teenagers to be working.

Just as long as the employee programs like we've been talking about.

Students will find the opportunity needed.

- I've never been really sure of what I wanted to do.

And then I'd taken some engineering courses and the teachers liked me.

They told me I was doing well.

And that really helped me, they gave me places to explore.

I was told about tons of internships, places I could go and get information about this stuff.

How to grow.

And it, it helped me figure out what I wanted to do.

- Kind of opened up that window?

- Yeah.

I think it's very much your teachers, and counselors, and people.

If they talk to you and uh, Like just display all this stuff.

And they help you pick what you wanna do really.

I feel like that impacted me a lot.

- So I think kind of pulling both of the responses before together it's awareness and empowerment.

Because I think kids need to be made aware of the opportunities that are in Kansas City specifically.

But then also empowered to go try and take the initiative and do those opportunities and get involved in different organizations and really take hold of their own futures.

- I strive to empower my students by modeling opportunities So I try to take advantage of everything and be outside the box, and be uncomfortable with them.

And take opportunities as much as I can too.

- Wonderful.

So we haven't talked a lot about discomfort.

What are some fears?

- For the longest time I was like one of the shyest kids in elementary school, so I would never talk.

And growing up I would always see like these people on stages with like politics, or even like marketing stuff.

Promoting what they believe in.

And as a child I always knew I wanted to do that despite if I was shy or not.

And the fear I had was public speaking in front of a lot of people especially.

And as you can see I've grown out of that.

Because I knew that even though I was afraid of it I had to go for it because that's what I envisioned myself doing.

And that's what I wanted to do.

So discomfort is a necessary thing to succeed in life.

So I think that's just something everybody needs to go through living.

- I'm in the fire science program, so a lot of what we do is uncomfortable.

Walking into a fire, or a building that's on fire, that's uncomfortable.

And so we're just highly encouraged to take all the risks.

That's definitely our instructors.

But that's things that are uncomfortable, have to take that step and try and move through it.

- Mind if I jump in real quick?

- Yeah - So adults in the room.

The ones that are here speaking to you, we all have fears too.

Right?

Failure is a gift.

That's where all the lessons are in life.

So we look at, So Kenny's clean, he's got his nice suit on right?

So there's a start to Kenny right?

You don't often get a chance to know what that start is because you said you see, you're experiencing what you think the end result is.

Kenny's still moving towards what he's supposed to be doing in life.

That's amazing, right?

Cause I still don't know what I wanna do.

Right, I'm still figuring that out.

But I'm having fun a long the way.

So I love that you know, but just know that even when you see people come in and present to you, and they walk and they look like they have everything together.

There's a path to that.

There's a story to that.

It wasn't always pretty.

We make it look like it's easy.

It's not easy.

There's a lot of work that goes into what we do.

It will never, that'll never stop being the case.

At the end of the day, you are exactly responsible for your path in life.

And I love the teachers that are influencing you and helping you.

We all do that.

It's why we're here.

But you are responsible for when you do well, when you do bad, you own it.

And just know that failure's a gift to you.

- Yes in the back.

- When I was little and I'd mess up, or do something in front of people that I felt uncomfortable with.

My dad always would be like, "Okay so how do we fix this?

"You failed, now what do you need to do to succeed?"

And when I was little I'd always be like ugh I don't wanna look back on that.

I don't wanna look back on my failures.

But now he taught me that like when I mess up in front of a group or when I do fail, I need to take that like express like okay now what do I need to do to fix this?

What steps do I need to take to succeed and how do I use that failure to like grow and make myself better.

And so I'm really grateful that I had a dad, or like I had people.

I had people telling me okay, how do we fix this.

Let's focus on what went wrong and figure out how to succeed and how to change that.

And I feel like that's something that people really need to, that people should always think like, oh let's not focus on uh I'm so upset that I failed.

Let's focus on like yay a learning opportunity.

- We learn so much from our mistakes right?

We had a question or a comment over here.

- I just wanna speak for those families and those students that are not represented here.

And are rarely represented in any space when we're talking about access and opportunity.

Students with disabilities are completely left out of the equation for all that we're talking about here.

As a parent it is heartbreaking to think that we sit back and our students graduate from high school and they graduate to the sofa.

And many parents are quitting their jobs and staying home and babysitting their adult children for the rest of their lives.

I would hope that every person in this room commits themselves to saying, lets make sure that these students they leave here and they're able to be contributing members of society.

And that we don't leave not one child behind as we talk about advancing our workforce and making sure that we're building a better Kansas City.

- [Miles] Yes thank you Kim - [Male in Audience] Well said - [Miles] Very well said - I think from a career educator perspective we've heard a lot about people being uncomfortable and being willing to be uncomfortable.

I think the education community needs to be.

We've been doing a disservice to our kids.

In the short, it's not that we don't work hard, it's that we work hard for the wrong thing.

And getting kids these connections into our community here, and professional connections, career connections is something that all of the education community all of our teachers, not just the ones that are concerned about careers, not just the ones that are in project lead the way things like that, not just our career and tech teachers need really badly education on and to be willing to do.

- You know one of the things that has really struck a nerve for me is that several people have said, "Well it's 13 years to reach that goal."

And actually it's more about the journey, and then to hear that students need, cause I was thinking how are we going to survive this, cause these careers are in dire need of new people.

And how are we going to inspire young people to go into those fields that the journey is so long.

And so the thing that helped me with that was, well I need a mentor, I need someone to kind of push behind me and inspire me and lead me through the process.

And teach me that it's a life long journey.

And it isn't about anymore, medicine's not about practicing in isolation.

It's about practicing in collaboration.

I'm actually very encouraged and very inspired by these young people today.

- We have a young lady right here.

- I'm terrified to like fail at anything that I do, but I also have, we have two student led businesses within our school.

We have a coffee shop run by Tina Fultz and the accounting department.

And then the marketing department, is the Panther Market which is also set up through DECA ran by Kimberly Schroeder and those teachers have been a huge inspiration to me in a way that not only do they let students run it, they let students fail, so if we push out, or market an item that doesn't work they're like okay you need to set up something to get back into it.

So they're not afraid to let us fail as well and it helps us to see that some things just don't go your way in life.

And it's a very good thing because they're failing alongside with us just as well.

It's an experience and they're, if we screw up at something, they're more than willing to take the blame for it, but they're also expecting that we take the responsibility for the failure that happened.

- So we'll take one more, go ahead Bella.

- I've been so grateful for all my experiences going into working with these big businesses.

I haven't been judged by my age and I've been treated at the same level.

And I'm very thankful to see in society there's starting to be more of a push that people are believing in our younger age and seeing our potential more.

- At that note I think that's a perfect place to close.

I just wanna thank you all for your time for your effort to be here.

For sharing your hopes and your dreams.

And also just hearing what you think the future can be because I am very excited by all the potential that I feel in this room.

I'm Miles Sandler from the Kauffman Foundation.

Special thanks to Susan Wally of Prep-KC Anita Davis of MARC, Andre Davis of Built, and Dr. Kenny Rodriguez of Grandview schools.

to the students, educators and community members that are in this audience as well as outside of this audience We thank you and to KCPT's viewers and supporters.

Find out more about in-demand jobs, innovative local career readiness programs and students that are finding success in Kansas City at kcpt.org/americangraduate Take care.

[Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of the public media initiative American Graduate, Getting to Work.