HOLY FAMILY ACADEMYCorporate Work Study Briefing

Supervisor Breakout Summary - Tips

February 13 & 18, 2015

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1: What to do with “Downtime” Get the office involved in helping to find tasks Take out to the other offices for “field trips” –

meetings, network with others Have students provide perspective on projects

◦ Increases understanding of value of work Last 10 minutes of day: use for going over impact

of the day Industry/research articles – have students prepare

summaries of topics that you’ve been “wanting to get to”

Set aside a student folder with a backlog of work that’s not time sensitive

Explore other Microsoft systems Practice typing

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Reading/Learning about organization Think about personality when deciding on

tasks◦ Back paperwork ◦ Prepare folders/documents◦ Events preparation and clean-up◦ Computer work

Organize files – areas of office with “stuff that’s been around for a long time”

HFA online typing practice and working on work study PowerPoint assignment

1: What to do with “Downtime”(cont’d)

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“Just Do It” – teens are used to being critiqued, but their memories are short!◦ Remember positive reinforcement, particularly

when it’s an improvement in response to your correction

Be direct in coaching on body language and behavior

Weekly meeting with the people the student work with to get input

Short talk at the end of the day

2: How to Provide Timely, Constructive Feedback

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Ask them for feedback in return … “if there was one thing that we could change….”

Have fun conversations to have them be comfortable with you

Do not overthink Set the expectations – no surprises

2: How to Provide Timely, Constructive Feedback, cont’d

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3: How to encourage high-quality work

Get work that interests students Show the value of the work Positive feedback telling them what they

have done well Continually overview of work (quality

feedbacks) Adjust work to student level/interest Before they start the task, brainstorm on

what “a good job” looks like – have student help to describe a well-done task. Write bullets on whiteboard or paper. Use them as an early check and final quality check

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3: How to encourage high-quality work, cont’d

Have student take notes and run them by the supervisor

Help them understand the importance of the work

“No job is too small” – for you or for them! Give them their own “quality check”

◦ Ex: after scanning, give them 3 electronic files to go find … similar for manual filing

◦ Give them a break between completion of task and quality check

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Make students aware of the time required to do the task

Tom – provides watches for each student because “time is important in a business setting”

Give students a list of tasks to be completed in a certain time frame

Outline task on an index card, give to student – task is not complete until index card returned (this may help alleviate students who don’t report back after finishing a task)

If they’re going to use PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel, start with something easy & maybe an online tutorial first

4: How to keep student on-task and moving to next task

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Have them work alongside college interns Have them work on ongoing or repetitive

projects Help them understand why they are doing

the tasks – give context! Follow-up and give them recognition for

their work. Mix up the tasks to keep it interesting

5: How to help students feel engaged in their work

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This is hard… don’t feel bad! Ask open-ended questions Make them feel comfortable Establish common grounds/interest Know their likes and interests Get students involved in staff meetings if

possible Ask what they’re doing at Manchester

Craftsmen’s Guild (art classes) … are they going to after-school activities

If none of this works … don’t feel bad!

6: How to encourage open communications with students

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Where do they feel comfortable Specific Goals – 2 conversation per day Pair student with seasoned presenter Need someone with specific skills about

interactions Building exercises

7: Carnegie Science Center / Children’s Museum Special Topic: How to improve student communications with public visitors and colleagues

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Administrative Events/special projects Templates Soft skills and professionalism focused tasks Eating lunch with staff Rotating departments and mentors Business letters/Excel Professional email address/correcting spelling and

grammar mistakes Data entry Project (small) that students can handle from start to

finish, because they take pride in the project being their own work

Copying, scanning, composing emails/memos Filing documents

Best Tasks for 9th Graders