CopiaGroup School Services

We are dedicated to education reform that integrates work and learning. We advocate entrepreneurship and electronic publishing to teach young people how the world works and how to make it work for them. We assist schools, businesses, and community organizations who are creating programs to help all young people, college bound or not, get the high level preparation that will enable them to make the transition from school-to-work.

Planning Your School-to-Work Strategy

School-to-work planning occurs at several levels. Individual programs can be designed to develop the abilities associated with the school-to-work philosophy. Academies can be formed, linking together several programs that share planning and instruction. The whole school can develop a comprehensive school-to-work approach that reaches across and unifies all the curricula. The school can work with local businesses and community organizations to build an extended learning environment that includes learning opportunities beyond the school including entrepreneurship, work place experience, and public service.

We will work with you to advance your school-to-work planning process at the individual classroom, departmental, school-wide and community levels. Our planning services include:

-overview of the political and economic environment,
-clarification of school-to-work abilities,
-strategies for developing abilities in each of the subjects,
-examples of school-to-work approaches,
-development of school-business partnerships,
-planning at each level,
-planning process management.

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Integrating Academics & Vocational Training

One of the major challenges facing high schools today is integrating vocational training and academics in a meaningful way. Over the years, there has been an evolution of approaches to vocational training. Classes that teach very specific skills are still important, yet increasingly programs are being created that integrate the development of workplace abilities with the traditional academic subjects. These programs need to be carefully designed to avoid diluting either the vocational and academic content. These classes can be created in each of the academic subjects including Science, English, World Languages, History, Social Studies, Fine Arts, and Mathematics.

We will work with your planning team to clarify goals for your students and design programs that will give them the learning experiences that will enable them achieve those goals.

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Entrepreneurship & School-Based Enterprises

Students learn a great deal about the realities of work by running their own business from within the school. School-based enterprises enable students to develop abilities and attitudes that will allow them to be effective in many future careers, often completely unrelated to the school enterprise. They learn to plan the enterprise, gather the necessary resources, work in teams, monitor and improve systems, and serve real clients. School-based enterprises have been created based on many different business types such as electronic publishing centers, light manufacturing, food products, restaurants, and retails stores. Each type of enterprise has its own associated costs and benefits.

The initial design of a school-based enterprise has a major long term impact on the quality of learning experiences the program will provide over the years. Some types of enterprises offer a wide variety of experiences during the inception of the business but more limited, routine opportunities as the business becomes stabilized. We will help you choose a business model and design a school-based enterprise that will take advantage of the unique resources of your community to create the learning experiences you want for your students.

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School-to-Work Through Electronic Publishing

Electronic publishing is an excellent way to create a meaningful linkage between school and work. Students work in teams using computers and other equipment to create products that communicate information and ideas in any subject area. The products can be paper-based products such as yearbooks, brochures, and newspapers or electronic products such as video productions, multimedia magazines, CD-ROMs, and World Wide Web sites.

Electronic publishing is a communication process that puts technology to immediate practical use. Students develop workplace abilities while they work together to accomplish the practical objectives of the publishing enterprise. The abilities they develop are transferable to other school and work environments in which they participate both during their high school years and later in life.

Flexibility is one of the most attractive aspects of electronic publishing as a means of bringing school-to-work learning to the high school. The publishing model can be applied in each of the academic subject including the Sciences, Language Arts, World Languages, History, Social Studies, Fine Arts, and Mathematics without substantial change in the equipment or the fundamental approach. This enables sharing of equipment and training resources and provides a natural bridge between programs and across subjects.

We will help you apply the electronic publishing model in any of the academic subjects, as a school-based enterprise, or as a strategy for integrating the high school curricula.

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Developing School-Business Partnerships

There are many opportunities in every community to create healthy partnerships between the school and local businesses. These partnerships can provide great opportunities for student learning and provide real value to the business partner. The partnerships can take very different forms depending on the needs of the school and the business. It is very important for the relationship to continue to benefit both partners so that it can be sustained over time and become an integral part of an overall school-to-work program.

We will help you evaluate partnership opportunities in your community and create a strategy for approaching local business leaders with a range of options for partnering with your school. If you would like to work to improve existing partnerships, we can work with and your business partners to evaluate the relationship and redefine it in ways that will improve it for both of you.

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Staff Development

Throughout implementation of your schools school-to-work strategy, staff development will be an ongoing requirement. We can help you with each facet of your professional development from awareness raising, determining training needs, designing a staff development program, delivering training, and evaluating the effectiveness of your training program. We can create online professional development systems as a component of your staff development program.

We can work with teachers of individual programs, a department, or the staff of an entire school, depending on your needs. Workplace abilities can be developed in any subject area without compromising the integrity of the academic content. We respect the professional integrity of teachers and work in a collaborative way to integrate school-to-work ideas into their existing curricula.

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Communicating Your School-to-Work Plan

Families, business leaders, and community members are all concerned about how high schools are preparing young people for life after school. Actively communicating your school-to-work plan can have a positive influence on the relationship between the school and these stakeholder groups.

We will help you design and implement a communication plan that will project your concern, understanding, and strategy for ensuring that all students, college bound or not, are being prepared for the world beyond school.

If your communication plan includes online systems, we can help you design, create, and host those resources.

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Students Mentoring Teachers in Technology

Many high school students are very capable of helping their teachers learn to use technology more effectively. Most teachers are eager for help with technology. A students mentoring teachers program can help the whole school move forward with technology while providing an opportunity for students to develop many workplace abilities such as interpersonal skills, resource management, and serving clients. This approach encourages the development of a community-of-learners philosophy throughout the school. Students also learn how challenging being a teacher can be. Teachers and students participating in the program often develop greater mutual respect.

Students can also go off site to other schools or local businesses to provide technology mentoring to teachers, other students, and employees. In this way the high school program can become a resource to the community. Students gain personal pride and responsibility by directly and immediately providing benefit to others.

We will help you set up a "Students Mentoring Teachers in Technology" program either as a stand alone or as an aspect of an electronic publishing or other technology program.

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Conference Presentations

We are available as speakers to make presentations on the role that online technology is playing in implementing the school-to-work programs. We tailor our presentations to the needs of the audience and the focus of the meeting or conference. For a general audience, we can cover the social and employment changes that are focusing increasing attention on upgrading the performance capabilities of all Americans. We provide an overview of the economic and political environment in which the school-to-work movement has been developing.

For audiences of educators we can focus attention on the changes that are occurring in schools in response to the economic and political forces that are shaping our nation. We provide examples of the educational approaches that are being explored here in the United States and compare and contrast these to those in other countries, bearing in mind our unique social, ethnic, and historical characteristics.

We also discuss school-to-work issues with subject-specific audiences. We suggest ways in which workplace abilities can be developed in the Sciences, Language Arts, World Languages, History, Social Studies, Fine Arts, Industrial Technology, and Mathematics without diluting the core academic content. We support this discussion with concrete examples of the integration of school-to-work with each of the academic subjects.

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