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WorkReady™ is a 60-hour foundational skills training program developed to meet the requirements set forth by key Maine employers, provides businesses with workers possessing basic skills—being able to show up for work, on time, as scheduled, ready for work; able to work as a team; understanding the appropriate way to handle and react to workplace conflict; knowledgeable about basic business practices. All identified as common baseline skills required in new employees.
Boy walking
My son is walking across America. When I mention this to business colleagues and others I have conversations with, they often ask me, “is he trying to raise money for something?” The answer is “no.” He’s doing it because he decided that is how he’d spend his summer.
Children Grow Up and Fly Away
Parenting is the hardest activity many will ever do in life. The irony in this is that there are really no manuals to follow. Oh, there are a wealth of books, written by America’s expert class that tell you all the “right” things to do, or how to skirt the laws of man and incorporate corporal punishment into the mix, or utilize manipulation and subterfuge. I have little good to say about the likes of these.
A dog’s life
Growing up, I never had a dog. My mother, preternaturally neat, thought dogs were dirty and uncouth. I did manage to get her to bend her restrictions enough to have a cat, one we thought was a male, who actually turned out to be female and give birth on my mother’s couch. But that’s another story.
Creating a technology bridge to the past
With options galore available to capture the interest of today’s teens, history – particularly that of the local variety – often falls off the youthful radar screen. With popular culture placing more value on the 15 minutes of fame of the superficial and the sordid, it’s easy to see why the study of the past no longer captivates.
Laboring to write
I know firsthand that writing involves labor—obviously not the physically exhausting kind that accompanies the manual variety—but the difficult mental and often similarly taxing kind that must shadow the stringing of words together in attractive, cogent patterns. I think this knowledge of how difficult this can be has kept me away from my craft longer than is usual for me.
Success from scratch
I’m now in my fourth year of working for a small nonprofit, focused on workforce development issues. Until I was hired by the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board, I knew little about the complexity of Maine’s workforce development system, and the strategic intersection it has to have with economic development, for Maine to have any kind of future in the 21st century.
The finances of unemployment
A consultant at one of our regional CareerCenters shared this great article with me, about unemployment, and whether taking a job, or continuing to sit idle is in your best interest, if unemployed.
Why fitness matters
There are multiple benefits to revving up the physical side of things. How about alleviating stress that comes from work, relationships–life in general?
Michael Pollan on Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! interviews Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, and he discusses the link between healthcare and diet, the dangers of processed foods, the power of the meat industry lobby, the “nutritional-industrial complex,” the impact industrial agriculture has on global warming, and his sixty-four rules for eating. “The markets are full of what I call edible food-like substances that you have to avoid,” says Michael Pollan. “So a lot of the rules are to help you, you know, navigate that now very treacherous landscape of the American supermarket.”