Key factors:
- College students typically battle to transition to the workforce, and psychological well being generally is a huge consider that battle
- One educator launched a brand new method to scholar psychological well being to enhance an current emphasis on pre-vocational talent growth
- See associated article: How our district engages college students in a CTE program
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As a longtime public college occupational therapist, I do know what college students look and sound like after they’re able to transition from the work lab to the workforce.
Lately, I’ve personally witnessed extra of my college students battle to make that transition or not make it in any respect. It has nothing to do with an absence of technical expertise, as I’ve seen them grasp difficult vocational ideas and duties — graphic design, woodworking, 3D printing, and CNC programming. The battle has every thing to do with skyrocketing anxiousness, melancholy, and trauma skilled by my college students as they put together to enter the workforce.
Our college students are experiencing a psychological well being disaster throughout our state and nation, and that’s one thing all of us can and should work to deal with. That’s why I’m targeted on serving to our common training and particular training college students develop job expertise and strengthen their psychological well being whereas nonetheless in our hallways.
Beginning about six years in the past, I labored with my colleagues at Warren Woods Public Colleges in Warren, Michigan, to launch a brand new method to scholar psychological well being and wellness to enhance our current emphasis on pre-vocational talent growth. This system, obtainable at our district’s two excessive faculties, contains an OT lab that mixes technology-driven and conventional machines, a reset room the place college students can course of feelings in a chilled surroundings, and an after-school program known as Scratch the Floor.
