Friends News
Newsletter of the Friends of the Community Learning Center
Spring 2012
On the Web: www.friendsofclc.org
Points of Entry Project Funds Career
Development for CLC Students
Career Counselor Rebecca Garland
For Community Learning Center
students the main motivation for returning to
school is to improve their lives. At the heart
of this goal is finding a good job. In January
the CLC became one of eight programs
nationwide to receive a Points of Entry grant
focused on the development of career plans
for CLC students. The grant is funded by
the Open Society Foundation. Rebecca
Garland has been hired for the position of
Career Counselor to help spearhead the
project.
Rebecca, the CLC counselors, four
teachers, and employment specialists from
Career Source, the Massachusetts one-stop
career center located in Cambridge, are
working as a team to facilitate workshops,
implement career plans for students, and
integrate career awareness into the CLC
curriculum. They are working with 50
students in two English classes and two
pre-GED classes. In addition to helping
students in a vital way, the project lays the
groundwork for meeting the requirement of
the MA Department of Elementary and
Secondary education that by the year 2014
all students in adult basic education
programs will have career plans.
Three career fields are the focus of
the project: business, health, and early
childhood education. Rebecca and the
employment specialists from Career Source
are running a series of workshops, some of
which feature guest speakers from the three
fields, including CLC graduates who are
now in related careers. The students have
visited Career Source to enroll, do an
internet job search, and complete a career
exploration questionnaire called the SelfDirected Search. The employment
specialists are also developing job shadows
and conducting intensive job searches with
selected CLC students.
In interviewing people to develop
their career plans, Rebecca has made some
important discoveries: 1) A one-size-fits-all
approach doesn’t work with the diverse
student population at CLC. 2) Questions
like: What are your interests? What’s your
dream job? often do not work well, at least
initially, for people who are struggling to
survive and are aiming for any job they can
get. 3) People’s career paths do not go in
a straight line, which Rebecca can attest to
with her own path. 4) It’s important to start
with where each person is right now and to
learn about his/her family situation and past
history, not only his/her job history.
Although her role does not involve
directly finding jobs for people, Rebecca
sometimes encounters students who
desperately need work. When a student
recently said, “I just need a job,” they turned
to Craig’s List, and Rebecca helped him
prepare a resume and apply for some of the
jobs listed.
Some students have only a vague
idea of what they want to do. One student
described the job he wanted thus: “I want to
write musical riffs, post them on the
computer, and have people buy them.” Not
to be daunted, Rebecca found a related
class offered at Bunker Hill Community
College called Audio Production Technician.
She went on to answer his questions about
college: What’s a credit? What’s a prerequisite? If I go to BHCC, which office
should I go to?
Some of her counseling involves
finding a path for people who have been
highly educated in their countries. For
example, she is working with a woman with
a degree from a university in Morocco and
another woman who trained as a doctor.
An important type of counseling is
steering students away from for-profit
training programs that charge exorbitant
rates for services they don’t necessarily
deliver. One student, who did not have a
high school diploma, was about to pay
$17,000 for an electrician training program.
Rebecca steered him away from this school
and encouraged him to focus on his English
classes at CLC before borrowing large
amounts of money for further training.
The Points of Entry project is being
evaluated by Abt Associates. When the
project ends in July, they will determine the
impact these career interventions have had.
The CLC will use lessons learned from the
project to decide how to incorporate
productive career planning strategies
into curricula and programming throughout
the Center’s activities.
Friends Board Welcomes Two New
Members
Christine Sigman is a technical writer and
project manager at Endeca Technologies in
Cambridge. About joining the Board she
says: “I was a part-time ESL teacher at CLC
when I first moved to the Boston area in the
1990s. I always enjoyed its positive,
respectful, supportive environment, where a
post-doctoral student from MIT and a
Cambridge cab driver could sit next to each
other in class and learn together. I
transitioned to a different career and lost
touch with the CLC, but when my family
moved to Cambridge a few years ago, I
decided to get involved once again, this
time as a member of the Friends rather than
as a teacher.”
Margaret “Peg” McDonald is an
accountant and marketing associate at
Festival Preview LLC. She has also worked
as a paralegal and in finance and business
development. Her expertise and experience
make her a welcome addition to the CLC
Friends Board.
Sunday, June 10th, 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.
At the home of Mark and Carolyn BoyesWatson
222 Erie Street, Cambridge
$75.00 per person, to Benefit the Bridge to
College Program
Contact Mina Reddy, 617-349-6363