Inside SFPS
Inside SFPS
Episode 28: Equipping Students with Real World Skills (ft. Jose Villarreal)
In this episode, Jose Villareal discusses the Santa Fe Public Schools' Work-Based Learning Program. Through this initiative, students acquire essential employability skills, including teamwork, initiative, time management, and a robust work ethic. Tune in to discover how these students are gearing up to face the world with confidence and competence.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hey folks, and welcome to another edition of the Inside Santa Fe Public Schools Podcast. I am Joe Obata, and today we have a special guest. We have Jose Villarreal, who is the Work-Based Learning Coordinator. How are you doing today, Jose? Doing great, Joe. Yeah, thanks for coming, brother. Thank you for having me. It's exciting. You're a busy man, bro. You're busy. You know, it's part of the role. It's part of the job. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Yeah, you've established this program that you guys have. Is this your first year? This is going on summer number three, so we're in year three. Okay, okay, okay. So let's just start from the beginning for the people that don't know. What is the Work-Based Learning Program here in Santa Fe Public Schools? So the Work-Based Learning Program is a high-quality internship program that's based in Santa Fe Public Schools. We collaboratively engage employers, high-value employers that end up in careers, who offer our students high-quality experience in an internship. So essentially, that's what it is. So, and it gives the students an opportunity, right, to get out there into the job market. You guys teach them, right? Talk about that. You guys teach them how to be professionals, right, and be successful in the workforce, right? It's true. So we have a system, and we run two cohorts. One is during the summer. One is during the school year. And in those cohorts, at the beginning, we basically recruit students with business partners in the beginning, and then we take them through what we call boot camp-style training. And what that includes is helping build their resumes, helping them with interview skills, preparing them ultimately for a high-quality interview. And so they interview, just like the real world, just like the rest of us that are trying to get a job, they interview and earn their internship with those interviews with our employers. So after that process happens, we take them through other trainings to get them prepared, like you mentioned, professionalism, work ethic, learning about what is effective communication, and they should be answering their e-mails and texts and whatnot, and how to respond on time. So we help them basically get prepared for what is professionalism on the job. And then once they begin their internship, they're basically working with the employers, learning all of these skills that we're theoretically training them to do in the beginning. We meet with them intermittently. And so what happens there is we help them understand what they're learning, and we also give them tools to apply at the work site during their internship. So we have a great process for beginning, middle, and at the end, at the end of the internship, we come back together as a big group, employers, students, parents, and we celebrate, champion everyone, listening to the students, how they've grown, how they've matured, the confidence that has come with this, and, of course, the skills that they've learned. It's a great process. It's kind of our secret sauce, if you will. Yeah, and you had mentioned, you know, because I've been part of the process of that, you know, with SportsPrimo, and I've seen you guys have like a work, you have a work fair. What is it called? A job fair, right? It's in a job fair type of setting. You had it, the one I participated in was at the Ox Gym at Santa Fe High, and you, these kids, students come by, they sit down, they hand you their resume, and then you start to, you ask them a bunch of questions. That's it. We prepare them basically for the game. Yeah. So in our training, we have all of the curriculum that's in-house built. Yeah. So we've founded this within our school district. We've founded the curriculum, the process, everything, the model. And so, yes, we train them with questions. They're general questions for an interview. Yeah. But we set them up for success. So when they meet with you, the employer, they already know how to introduce themselves with an elevator pitch. Yeah. So they can come in confidently, set themselves up for a good interview. And, of course, they research. They do different research on all of our employers before they show up to the interview. We give you the students that want to work with you. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, no, and I think, here's the thing, man. I think that it's, this is great because a lot of folks, I don't know, something was lost in the sauce, if you will, right, with just the basics of being, of going into a job interview, being an employee. I mean, a lot of employers are just looking for people that are just happy to be there, that show up on time and just do their work, and that's it, just the basics of it, right? And being a good communicator, too, I think that's very important in today's world. And if you could just do that, you could be really successful in any job that you pick up, right? Especially if you're passionate about it, too. You have some kind of interest in it, right? That's exactly right. So the employers basically tell us, we can train them. Yeah. We have all of the training systems, if you will, or credentialing. You just need to give us somebody that's motivated, hungry for this. Yeah. And so that's kind of how our process, like I mentioned, is the secret sauce. We are the bridge between education and the workforce. So we get these students early on, and we say, all right, do you want to do this? It doesn't matter if you're going to go to college or you're going to end up in the workforce right after school. We'll take anybody who is motivated to do this. And it ends up, it's funny because you can't make any presumptions about these students because you're like, oh, you're all straight A student. You're planning on going to college or whatnot. And then you have this other student where you're just like, well, your attendance might be a problem. But we want them both. And it's funny how they kind of end up in the workforce. One outperforms the other. And sometimes it's the one that needs this type of opportunity. Yeah. They just seem to have a chance. They need a chance. Right. And you think about it. I mean, with communication skills, too, for folks that need to get into those colleges where they have interviews with the students. Right. They're all set up. So it's kind of like a kill two birds with one stone type of stuff. It sets them up for success. For other opportunities that may arise that require interviews and presenting themselves, selling themselves, that type of thing. And also giving them life skills or say in an interview, tell me about something during work that you learned or something like that. And they're able to share those experiences that they normally wouldn't have had. So true. All of the above. So this sets students apart, whether it's going to college or career. So like you said, what does your employer look for first on your resume? Yeah. It's work experience. So a lot of these students. Yeah. It's their first work experience. Yeah. But they're learning skills that you can't learn in the classroom. Yep. So it looks good, like you mentioned, when they're interviewing or on their application for college. It looks good for their first job or their second job now. Yeah. So all of those things. But then again, you and I both know, like I went to school for business. Yeah. And I didn't know, like I learned a theory. I learned all about accounting, learned all about all the operations and billing and all the things. Yeah. But I really wasn't able to learn how to do those things until I actually started doing it and experiencing that when I ran my own business. Yeah. My former life. Yeah. So yeah, this is what it's all about. It's hands-on learning. They get all of these new skills. They set themselves apart from their peers because it's going to be competitive. Yeah. After high school and even after college. It is, yeah. It also helps them understand, like, what do I really want to do? When you're in high school, what do you want to do? You know, you didn't know exactly maybe what you wanted to do. That's a lot. That's the higher percentage of our students. Yeah. And I think that that's important, too, because I think a lot of anxiety. These kids have a lot. Students have a lot of anxiety. I say kids, but students sounds better, right? But these students have a lot of anxiety about, what am I going to do when I get out of high school? What am I going to major in in college? Like, I don't know. I know one of the interns that we had was amazing, David. He is going to New Mexico State to become a, he was getting in the nursing program down there. And he told me, he said, you know, I've thought about it, man. He says, I really like doing, you know, being out on the court and doing social media and shooting videos and getting the hits on videos and stuff like that, you know. And he said, it's really something I might want to continue doing. I said, well, you can do that as a minor if you wanted to or whatever. You know, stick with nursing, have that as your bread and butter, and then you can, you know, do a social media thing if you wanted to or work for the school, you know, doing the athletics for them and stuff like that. My daughter is doing that right now. She's a social media manager for her school out in California. So it's just like these things lead to different things. You know, you figure out what your passion is. You can figure out what your passion is through this program. Absolutely. So I got a lot of other questions, follow-up questions, but I think one of the big questions that may be looming out there for the folks listening to us is, what kind of jobs? What are we talking about, man? Are we just talking about, you know, pulling weeds and, you know, kind of these things, or are we talking about real professional jobs at settings that I'm going to be in? What is it exactly? What's out there? So you mentioned how old we are as a program. Well, we started, Santa Fe is known for its world-class hospitality. Yes. So we started there. Okay. We partnered with, it was serendipitous. We were introduced to these four general managers of a few of our luxury properties here in Santa Fe, and we were able to introduce our model, and we hit the ground running with them. Okay. So we started with hospitality. All right. But we've expanded, and let me talk a little bit more about that. Okay. So it's not just, like you mentioned, pulling weeds or the entry-level jobs. Yeah. It is a little bit about that. Not to say pulling weeds is bad, man. Some people love that stuff, right? No, no, no. You have to start somewhere. Yeah. And you have to earn your keep, if you will. Yeah. But ultimately, when these employers, these hoteliers came and created their end of the program, they didn't want students to just come in and do those entry-level tasks. They wanted them to learn about the careers. And as one of our GMs has mentioned in the past, it's like a little city that runs these hotels. Yeah. So there's the marketing. There's the sales. There's the finance. There's the, you know, all of the operational pieces that helps this place, even engineers. So they get placed in these different departments in these hotel properties. That's one of our major partners. They get placed with guest services, concierge. They get placed with events and planning, which is a huge moneymaker for the hotel property. So they learn all of these great skills within the hotel properties. So that's one. And then we exploded as far as from that first summer. We have over 75 partners now. So we went into the public sector. We have government agencies. And not just like, let me just talk a little bit about that. So we have state, city, we're the capital here, so we have state agencies. And so we have internships in the city attorney's office. We have public safety with the police department. We have students with the mayor in the mayor's office. There's a lot more there. IT, so information technology. And then we expanded into the private sector as well. So we have medical. We have internships there. We have civil engineering. We have partnerships in advanced manufacturing. The list goes on. You think about cybersecurity, you think about tech, we have partnerships there. We just recently partnered with Santa Fe Creative Code Initiative, which is supported by Apple. So these students are going out and creating apps. They're creating videos with Apple products. They're partnering with our partners to help develop these apps for their businesses. To help them beef up their, I don't know, guest experience, if you will. So there's so many different options. Off the top of my head, those are a few of the high value careers. When I mention high value, the definition of high value is it's going to be high wage, high growth, and high demand jobs. So that's the vetting that I do as far as going out and making a partnership with our community. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of jobs out there that you can end up as a manager at Dion's, for example, or McDonald's or all of those places, which is great. You can do that. And they're high wage in the beginning. But the ceiling is there in most of those opportunities. So our positions are basically, again, structured in that high value career with all the high thriving industries here in Santa Fe. And our partners know that when they bring on a student, they're not just going to give them those entry level tasks. They're going to have them shadow underneath the managers, the supervisors, the directors. And they're going to give them intermittent enrichment classes of what it is that that specialist does. So it's incredible. It's expanded like crazy. And right now, we can't even get in the way. I mean, the momentum is there. Like I said, 75 plus businesses out there that are end government agencies. And then we've had over 300 graduates. I was going to ask first, how many students are participating in this program? So the last two summers, we've had over 100 in each cohort. During the school year, we have around 85 plus. And they're paid, right? They're paid. Yeah. We've got to hit on that, man, because it's like, what is this? Well, I mean, you think about it. That's great. It is. You think about this, Joe. I think about this kind of as the analogy of a college athlete going into the professional. So they're not paid in college. And then in the pros, they earn it, right? They get that. So the experience in itself kind of is a huge incentive. But you mentioned the pay. So these are college athletes, if you will, that are getting paid. So the unique thing about our program is when we first started with the hoteliers back in 2022, again, it was just like meant to be that we met up with them and we introduced our model. And they were already thinking about how to do an internship program. Well, the very next fall, I was introduced to the city's Youth and Family Services Director, Julie Sanchez. And then I was also introduced to Rich Brown, who is the Office of Economic, formerly the Office of Economic Development Director. They were thinking about building a program within the city, an internship program, based on the need and also the desire of everyone to host that. So we introduced our model to them. They said, hey, we have some ARPA funds that we'd like to invest in your program. We're not trying to recreate the wheel. It sounds like you've got something going great here. So they ended up investing nearly $800,000 in our program for two years. So those are ARPA Federal Relief Funds. Okay. And ARPA is what? What is that? The American Rescue. It's basically similar to ESSER funds. It's Federal Relief Funds from the pandemic. Gotcha. Okay. I don't know the rest of the acronym, what it stands for. But basically, it's those Federal Relief Funds. And the title of the funds were Youth Workforce Development. So basically, they infested in us. And that fits in perfectly, right? Yeah. So that helped us just like a springboard into growth. So we were able to pay our students. Because back when the hoteliers started, they were paying their interns, which was great. But we're able to invest these funds in our program internally. We're kind of like a sub-recipient of these funds. So we basically bring on our interns through in-house, through our HR, Santa Fe Public Schools. So I got to give props where they're due, man. Yeah, no, man. So real quick. Yeah, absolutely. HR helps us, business services, payroll. On top of all of these employees within our school district bringing on new teachers, bringing on new staff, they bring on all of our interns, each cohort, which is a humongous lift. So I got to give them, like I said, just a huge shout out, huge thank you. But going back to the funding. That's extra 85 employees, man. Yeah. Extra 100. It's a lot. Yeah, exactly. So ultimately, they help us. But going back to the funding, we've talked with the city. We're like, hey, how do we create this into the long-term budget? So there's discussion around that. But they've helped us pay interns minimum wage, which is $14, $16 an hour, which is competitive. Yeah. And then we also have expanded our staff. So they help support staff. We brought on a work-based learning specialist, Michelle Hogan, who was our first work-based learning teacher. So the way that we're structured within the school district, I have a team of internship teachers that ultimately, during the school year, they run the program through one of their prep hours. And it's at each high school. And so they oversee their cohort as kind of a mentor on the school side. Yep. So we have four of those, four internship teachers. Now we have the work-based learning specialist. And during the summer, they are full-time in that position. I mean, it's a part-time role. It's 20 hours a week. Yeah. But they're full-time overseeing these students and not doing their regular teaching work. So it really is, again, I mentioned quality. Every single time we introduce our program to the public or talk about it with business partners and students, we say we want this to be a quality experience for everyone. Yeah. So that's how we do it. We have to have that staff in place. We have to have everybody trained. Our mentors have to understand, again, what's expected of them. And then everybody comes together and lifts up that one student. Yeah. And they get this great experience. They end up learning all of these skills. And then, like we talked about earlier, they end up setting themselves apart. Well, and here's another thing. I know from the city and coming from the city that, you know, there's always this push, and especially in Rich Brown's group is how do we keep our folks over here to be able to stay here in Santa Fe and to, you know, be a part of our community and work for our community, right? And this just seems like a gateway into allowing students to say, hey, I may want to go to school, but I do have these connections now at the hotels or I have it over here at the city or the schools or whatever, and I really enjoyed that job. I think maybe what I'm going to do is maybe I'll go to school here and then come back and then work here. Or even maybe, like, you don't want to go to school. You want to get into the trades. You want to work in HVAC or you want to be a plumber. You want to get, you know, in auto collision, you know, that kind of thing. And those are the things that you've learned here in the city of Santa Fe, and you're making some really good money doing that and you love what you're doing. You're going to stay in the community. So I know that that works in the city's initiative of keeping the kids here, you know, to work here, and it's not such a bad place. And, yeah, we've got to figure out our living situation as far as, like, the housing and all that stuff. But, you know, if we can figure out this on a solution to getting the workforce to stay here, then we can figure out that housing issue, and that's a whole other podcast, bro. But that's awesome. I mean, that this is, you know, that this program has been so successful. I know it's a win-win. You guys are always looking, though, at adding more types of businesses, right, to be able to accommodate, you know, the interests of the students, right? Do you get like a – and here's another thing real quick, is that you teach them how to be responsible, right? If they want to get paid, they've got to go and they've got to take the timesheet and get it signed, you know, and you've got to do that. It's part of a job. It's part of being responsible. Those little checkboxes that you've got to do as far as working out in the workforce is because, you know, they bring you your– sometimes they'll say, hey, I haven't gotten my timesheet signed, you know, and it's due today. Well, you're going to have to figure out how we get that signed, right? That's true. So a couple of things that you said there were spot on. Just the latter things, yes, teaching them to be responsible. Yeah. 100%. What we're essentially doing is teaching them good work habits right now, and so they're going to be able to transfer over all of these skills, whether it's meeting deadlines, showing up on time, being productive during downtime. Communicating with your boss if you're going to be late, right? It's huge. It's huge, yeah. I mean, you know, we do have a couple of issues that happen every time that we run this program, and it's a no-call, no-show, kind of ghosting is what you call it, or it's during downtime, you're getting on your phone when you're not supposed to. Sometimes you can. It's okay to get on social media and whatnot during downtime if your boss says it's okay. But we address that in the beginning throughout, and they end up, again, trading that habit for, okay, I'm going to go in and find something to do that's productive for this business right now. Yeah. And so they end up either, whether it's cleaning or just going asking a supervisor what else I can do, and it really is kind of refreshing for them, the employer, to have these students come in and be responsible and show up on time and do the things, because the majority of our students are just go-getters. They're talented. Their work ethic is off the chart. They're very professional. Yeah. So it really is just telling them in the beginning, you know, not teaching them, just letting them know, this is expected of you, and they just go and do it. Yeah. The other thing you mentioned about the workforce side of it, like open up the gateways for our local students to get into our workforce. Yes. That has been a problem, right? Yeah, absolutely. There's a problem of recruiting from out of state. Yep. On the other end, our students, they end up going to college or whatever, and then they go work in Denver or Arizona or whatever, right? So that's the point of our program as well. Our goals are to keep our own here, for them to go out and build these relationships, network with other industry partners or other CEOs. I mean, think about it. These students get the opportunity to go out and basically prove themselves to the world. Yeah. And they get to meet these CEOs, which normally you don't get to rub shoulders with the president of a company or the director of this department or whatever it is. Yeah. And they get to do that, and they get to build the relationships, and then they say, okay, young person, go to get your degree, come back, you have a job here. Yeah. So we are building a workforce pipeline. It's exciting. We're in the very beginning of it, but in 10 years, these students are going to be coming back. We're going to have that kind of, I guess it's a workforce pipeline. Yeah. You call it, right? So that's our goal, economic impact. We're building jobs. Some of these students are going to create businesses here. So it's going to be a great thing overall in the long run. So, yeah, these are our goals. And if you let them, it's interesting because there's such a supportive community out there too, other than, right? And I'm just going to say this because I know this firsthand from experience. The interns that we had used in the moonlighting business that I have with SportsPrimo is that I really wanted them to learn and have their own signature on whatever they did, right? Getting social media or whatever. And I let them develop their own style. And it was, you give them a little bit of guidance and then they just run with it. And that was important. I think that was, it's really important, right? Because I'm a 53-year-old man and it's way different than being 18 in today's world than it was with 18 with me. And I just feel like we got to trust them too. And it builds a trust, right? That they can trust your mentor. You can trust your boss. You know what I'm saying? It's a trust that you have as a boss and then vice versa, right? And if you trust them and they feel that you trust them, they're going to do really good things. And they will bring good ideas to the table. And that's what you want to hear, right? A different perspective from a different generation bringing it. But I wanted to tell you that we had our interns, and you know this, but for the folks out there listening, that they had an opportunity to go out on the pit floor and to be able to be media people, working media people on the pit floor, right? And getting footage and whatnot. And the NMAA, they're partners of us and they said, just make sure they know how to be responsible with their credentials. They had full-fledged credentials from the NMAA, which I thought was awesome. Yes. They produced, they gave them the full credentials. And they said, let us know who they are. We'd like to meet them. They said, guys, here you go, have at it. You can't be here or here during the games, but feel comfortable on the pit floor. Man, I would have loved to have been on the pit floor at that age just to be on the floor, just because it has such a legacy about it. Or it's a legendary pit, whatever. But it grants kids those opportunities to do that. And I just love the fact that they just flourished in it and they shined in it. And I'm sure other businesses have had those experiences with the interns and stuff. So just a great gift, a great gift, man. You know what I mean? A great gift the program is to the community for sure. Thank you for saying that. And thank you for talking about your experience in trusting these kids. I've got to walk a fine line here, right? Well, no, it's true. But, I mean, you mentioned another great point about these young people. They are so talented. They're so innovative. They're creative. So if you give them the idea of, like, this is what is expected. This is what we do. Show them the whole scope of operations in the beginning. And just, like, this is how we run our business. They might be like, wow, well, we can do this to kind of better this process. Or we have this idea. Like you mentioned, I mean, they're digital natives. So they grew up with these phones in their hands. And so they know how to operate and how to beef up, if you will, their social media or whatever it is. But that's not it. Like, they're tech savvy. They are business minded. It's funny. We also have in part of our boot camp, we have Nusenda Credit Union come in. They come in and train students on the story of their paycheck and budgeting and, you know, finances. That's great. So they actually are like, we want that more at the beginning of the program rather than at the kind of middle because it benefits us. And they're so smart about, like, their finances. And they teach me about the stocks that they've already invested in. I'm like, you guys already invest in stocks. I can't believe that. That's awesome. So these kids are smart. They're talented. It really does help a business, not only in the sense of, like, helping them with new ideas, but it also helps a mentor understand, like, whoa, okay, so I'm bringing this young person in. They're teaching me that maybe I need to do some things different in order to, I don't know, just help with the operations seamlessly, right? So there's all this technology out there, and maybe some businesses aren't using it to their advantage where these students introduce it. It saves costs potentially. Potentially on businesses. It helps them with their training of their staff. We actually have a feedback loop where our mentors give us information about, like, this is what an intern is doing. This is the successes that they're having. Some of them are saying that our interns are so successful at their job, they're actually training our new staff, adult staff. They are training them to come in and do their jobs. I believe it. So the sky's the limit here as far as work-based learning. And, yeah, it just, I think it's, like you mentioned, it's opened up.
