Empowering Educators.
Guiding students to fulfill their potential.
Bring Career-Connected Learning to Your School
Looking for ways to incorporate soft skills training and real-world experiences that prepare students for success in college, career, and life? YouthForce NOLA offers a variety of career-connected learning initiatives designed to integrate seamlessly into your school, providing valuable opportunities for students to explore their interests and develop essential skills.
Build Your Skills
You’re committed to improving your craft to help students explore and successfully navigate their next steps in life. Through our educator programming and support, we share the tools you need to cultivate the skills students need to be successful, no matter where they go after graduation.
Soft Skills 360
Soft Skills 360 offers school leaders 3 years of capacity building to develop a school-wide system of soft skills strategies. Working with YouthForce NOLA’s expert soft skills coaches, we unearth the skills most critical to success in your classrooms, specific to a department or grade level.
Educator Capacity Building
Explore our various opportunities for school leaders to engage in professional development. Here you’ll learn how to integrate career exploration, pathways programs, soft skills, and more into your students' everyday learning experiences.
Funding
School leaders can utilize our assistance in navigating policies and public funding to support technical training and credential achievement in your school, and apply for YouthForce NOLA grants to support your school's commitment to expanded soft skills training, implementation of internship programs, and other career-connected learning projects.
Soft Skills Empowerment Workshops - For All Educators
Anyone who supports youth in our community is welcome to join our highly engaging soft skills training sessions at a time that works for them, with no long-term commitment needed! We especially encourage teachers and school leaders to come and learn side-by-side how to nurture soft skills education in classrooms.
For more information on how school leaders and teachers can access educator programming,
Career Expo
Each spring, we gather 2,000+ high school freshmen from public schools across the city to expose them to career pathways that will put them on a path to economic prosperity. We focus on good-paying, in-demand careers in four areas (Business Services, Digital Media/IT, Health Sciences, and Skilled Crafts).
Interested in hosting your own career fair? We can help recruit local companies based on your students’ interests, and we offer extensive support with planning and execution.
Build Student Skills With Future Connect
Across the country, there is growing recognition that fostering meaningful connections between students, educators, and professionals across a range of industries can create powerful learning experiences.
Our menu of career exposure opportunities connects your students with industry professionals and real-world experiences. Best of all, with Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans, we help alleviate the mental load of managing this work by simplifying the process of coordinating student learning opportunities with business and community partners.
Guest Speaker
Invite an individual or a panel of representatives from a local industry to speak with your students about their careers and education/training history, and answer students’ questions. We coordinate with speakers and prepare them for the session with talking points and a presentation.
Professional Skill Building
Prepare students for the world of work by introducing them to the essentials of professional communication and relationship-building. Lessons can be delivered by you, a Junior Achievement staff member, or one of our 250+ local business partners.
Site Visit
Visit GNO-area job sites with your students for a 60- to 120-minute tour, complete with employee presentations and an opportunity for Q&A.
Educator Externship
Educator Externships are professional development opportunities connecting the classroom to the workplace. Educators gain direct experience with local industry partners about trends, skill requirements, and opportunities, strengthening their teaching and bringing relevance to student learning.
Don’t see the content you’re looking for? We’ve got you covered! All of our programs can be adapted or combined to meet your needs, and we love for our teachers to get creative. Send us your ideas, and we’ll develop a program that works for you.
Foster Soft Skills
YouthForce NOLA trains educators like you on skill frameworks that help organize the most critical social, emotional, and cognitive skills young people need for success into a clear, research-backed structure that educators, employers, and communities can use.