Did you possess these competencies?

BB2C would like to thank everyone for attending last week’s BB2C Community Meeting/Business Advisory Council. About 50 people from around the county came together to discuss how we can move from Portrait to Practice. Starting with a business panel discussion, attendees heard about the ways that local employers help their employees improve on the competencies of the Portrait. During interviews employers use particular questions to find evidence that people possess these traits before they hire them. To find out more about the panel content, you can watch the discussion on the BB2C Facebook page (we apologize for the blurriness) and you can read Mike Kelly’s take on the evening in the Marietta Times by clicking here. 

After the panel discussion, small groups delved deeper into the topic and spent some time brainstorming ways to help youth understand the Portrait competencies and improve upon them. Some thoughts and ideas from the small group discussions are as follows (the full list of notes will be on the BB2C Business Advisory Council page in the near future): 

• How does a person know or show they possess the 6 competencies?

  • Honest evaluations

  • Quality feedback

  • Regularly reviewing with self reflection

  • Demonstrate them during internships and other “on-the-job” opportunities

• What opportunities can be used for young people to build these competencies in school and in the community? 

  • Work-based learning - part time job, internships, job shadowing, service organizations, capstone projects

  • Performances in front of others

  • Parents allowing children to learn from failure

  • Real world application 

  • Coaches and businesses demonstrating to students why the competencies matter

• What are some next steps that any organization can take to move from Portrait to practice? 

  • Mock interviews

  • Use interview questions as writing prompts and discussion starters

  • Use common vocabulary among schools, businesses, and parents

  • Internships

  • Pair standards with competencies

  • Providing mentors

  • Networking opportunities

How will this information be used? BB2C has teacher liaisons at all of the schools in Washington County. This group will be developing next steps based on the data collected during this meeting and data collected from the schools about current practices. Stay tuned….

I will leave you with one action step….picture yourself on the day you graduated from high school. Did you possess the 6 competencies listed in the Portrait? If so, how did you come to possess them? If not, how did you improve upon them as an adult? Your answers may be what we need in order to move from Portrait to Practice.