On the Road Collaborative

Career enrichment courses every semester, we offer approximately 30 10-week long career enrichment courses that expose youth to hands-on learning experiences taught by our community teachers. Career enrichment courses are led by local professionals and are designed to be interactive and hands-on so that youth are engaged and able to apply their learning. Youth also have many opportunities to practice critical workforce skills that will help them succeed in the future. Every class includes a field trip and culminates with a learning showcase where youth have an opportunity to teach back what they have learned through an authentic product, performance, or presentation. Youth have done everything from hosting a mock veterinarian clinic to arguing a mock trial in the circuit courthouse

Real-world skills development we also work with our youth to develop real-world skills, including discovering their individual voices, investigating their interests, building healthy team dynamics, and planning for their unique path toward success. Additionally, our 11th-12th grade youth participate in a variety of workshops, such as financial literacy and interview skills, specifically designed to help prepare them for life after high school. This focus On personal and professional development helps ensure that our youth leave us at the end of their high school able to make wise decisions about their future and excited to go confidently after their biggest goals.

Academic coaching while we encourage our youth to think about their futures, we know how important academics are to their growth and understand that school is the first place to practice their emerging skills. So each of our programs includes designated homework and tutoring hours to support our youth's academic goals, in addition to well-rounded growth. During this time, youth have the opportunity to get help from school-day teachers and academic coaches so that they can receive one-on-one guidance and continue to advance in their academics.

4th program - high school readiness our 8th and 9th grade academies provide increased opportunities for our youth as they transition to high school and move through the more rigorous and independent high school experience. These academies follow a set curriculum (personal development, community building, success skills, future planning) that is based On extensive research as to what youth need during these pivotal years, as well as our own observations during the first years of On the Road. 8th and 9th grade academies meet twice per week, with one day devoted to career enrichment courses and the other day focused On this curriculum. Academic coaching and college trips are also included. 5th program - college exploration to help our youth learn more about post-secondary options and the college application process, we take between 4-6 college trips every year, including both in- and out-of-state schools. This gives our youth the opportunity to learn more about a variety of colleges and universities and begin planning how to reach their professional goals. We want our youth to experience a college campus, learn more about majors and on-campus opportunities, and be inspired to start planning their next steps toward their professional goals. In addition to these exploration trips, we also help guide our youth through the college application and scholarship process, so they have the necessary support and hands-on experience with the practical side of planning for college and career. Other program notes: program expansion and youth participation: during the 2022-2023 school year, we successfully expanded our program services to waynesboro city with the launch of our program at kate collins middle school in the fall 2022. This was truly exciting accomplishment that has allowed us to build upon our successes in harrisonburg city from the past eight years and expand our reach to impact more youth in the shenandoah valley. Through our after-school and summer learning programs, we served 422 youth last school year across four program sites, empowering them with equal access to edcuational opportunities and hands-on career experiences and helping to close the 6,000 hour learning gap. Created transportation solution to ensure youth access to programs: we successfully navigated challenges with transportation for our after- school programs in harrisonburg during the 2022-2023 school year. After learning that we could no longer utilize school buses to transport our youth home from our after-school programs, we made significant investments in order to create and manage our own transportation apparatus using 12- passenger vans. While this came at great cost to the organization, it enabled the roughly 50% of youth in our programs who rely On transportation to be able to continue to participate.