Mentoring Mission brings Business Into H.S in Jefferson Union Dist.

Bringing business mentors into the high school classroom has been the passionate pursuit of Carol Valentino-Barry since 2012. She is a former high school business teacher, subcontractor for Education and Training with the Department of Labor and founder/executive director of Mentoring Mission, based in Chicago but working with schools across the country.

Cases in the Classroom (Harvard Business Publishing Cases)
Valentino-Barry introduced the Cases in the Classroom program at Westmoor High School in Daly City, California, outside San Francisco, in the Jefferson Union School District. The program brings together mentors who are usually graduates of Harvard Business School (HBS) or other prominent business schools, and high school students. The real world was brought home to the Westmoor students in May in a meaningful way as they studied an actual business case study, “The Truth” campaign, published by Harvard Business Publishing.

Westmoor teacher Andrew Hambre worked with students in his AP (advanced placement) Psychology class as they read the Case which examined American Legacy Foundation’s use of funds for an anti-smoking campaign. Should they continue targeting dollars to a successful campaign targeted to youth called “The Truth?” Or, should those funds instead be diverted to a campaign targeting already addicted adults?

Rita Koselka, writer, journalist (Forbes, U.S. News & World Report) and HBS alum led the final discussion of the case in the Socratic style with the class at Westmoor. Impressed with the thoughtfulness of the students, she said, “Teaching the case was so interesting and rewarding. All the students got involved and had insightful, relevant comments.”

Andrew Hambre was pleased with the results: “The case study helped my students think critically and engage in meaningful discussion.”

The Harvard cases are normally studied only by college or grad students; Harvard Business School is supportive of Mentoring Mission’s efforts to introduce this program into the high school curriculum.

Choose Aerospace
In the 2021-22 school year, Valentino-Barry facilitated the Choose Aerospace program at Westmoor H.S. and attracted industry mentors from United Airlines, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Zipline Drones. (see article from Oct. 2021: https://patch.com/california/s...)

Mentoring Mission has been partnering with targeted high schools across the country to introduce aviation maintenance as an addition to the curriculum. When Carol Valentino-Barry discovered a few years ago the tremendous need for Aviation Maintenance Technicians (AMTs) and the great opportunity for good jobs, she proceeded to set up the procedures to build pipelines to get high school students into that industry through the Choose Aerospace curriculum.

Mentoring Mission’s goal for each of the students is to complete the online training and pass the General Written portion of the A &P (Airframe and Powerplant) certification. Industry mentors, unions and airports will host summer jobs for students and sponsor the students in a TYPE 147 FAA approved aviation maintenance technician schools and hire them as full-time AMT’s.

Why is Bringing Business Together With Education So Important?
Valentino-Barry saw the disconnect for students between school and the real world and wanted to inspire them to consider all the possibilities that are available for their futures. Her wake-up call was reading the “Lasting Impact Study* – A Business Leader’s Playbook for Supporting American Schools” by the Gates Foundation, The Boston Consulting Group and Harvard Business School.

Mentoring Mission is guided by the findings in Harvard’s Lasting Impact Study and U.S. Competitiveness Research objectives for authentic partnerships between education and business to better prepare tomorrow’s workforce.

In the 2021-22 school year, outside the Bay Area, Mentoring Mission achievements included:
-Cases in the Classroom at Chicago’s Whitney Young H.S. Eight classes of high school students at Whitney Young Magnet High School analyzed Harvard Business School (HBS) Case Studies.

-Students from five business classes at Whitney Young Magnet High School and Carl Schurz High School in Chicago participated in mock job interviews with executives from several Chicago-area companies.

-Introduced Schurz H.S. Students to Aviation Maintenance as a Career. Mentoring Mission organized a field trip in November 2021 and another in June 2022 for students from Chicago’s Carl Schurz High School to O’Hare Airport to get them thinking about a career in aviation mechanics.

-Produced Cases in the Classroom at a Jersey City High School with Harvard grad and PhD professor flying in from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to lead the discussion. This was the second year that McNair Academic High School participated in Cases in the Classroom.

-Began working with a professor/author from Stanford University to introduce study of logic into the high school curriculum as a precursor for working in computer science.

-Applied for the Delta Grant from U.S. Dept of Labor to bring the Aviation Maintenance curriculum into high schools in the Delta region which begins in southern Illinois and continues south in the U.S.

Keeping Up with the Aviation Industry
Carol Valentino-Barry attended the Educator's Day at Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture in July and the MRO America's MRO Competition (Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul) in Dallas, Texas in April.

To Get Involved with Mentoring Mission
For more information about getting involved in Mentoring Mission as a school, sponsor or mentor, contact Carol Valentino-Barry at carolvalentinobarry@gmail.com. For more information about Mentoring Mission, visit www.mentoringmission.org.

* Lasting Impact Study - A Business Leader's Playbook for Supporting American Schools" by the Gates Foundation, The Boston Consulting Group and Harvard Business School (part of Harvard Business School's Competitiveness Project). Two thousand Superintendents and CEOs agreed: "We have no shared reality." The time had come for American business leaders to work with the nation's educators to support our schools which would also improve the future economy of the country.

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