Last week, young people from across our campuses came together at the Contemporary at Blue Star to engage in team building activities, make collaborative art pieces, and express their ideas of leadership using haikus. It was the second meeting of our CAST Network Student Advisory, a group of young people from across our campus who put on the equivalent of a student conference and offer feedback to the nonprofit as to how we can better serve our students.

Almost everything we do with these young people is tactile, making art or building things, engaging them in their surroundings, and encouraging cross-campus networking and movement. None of it is technical or technological.

This may seem odd, given our focus at CAST on the jobs of the future, and ensuring that students not only are ready for college but have hard, technical skills that an employer might hire them for right out of high school.

In an increasingly technological world, we are trying to find a balance between equipping students with the necessary skills for high-tech, high-wage, high-growth jobs and also the human skills that will mean their jobs cannot be replaced by technology.

After just the first two meetings, our student advisors are already contemplating the impact of being a part of the group. CAST STEM senior Eddie Peña stated: “student advisory prepares me for life through building my communication, collaboration, and teamwork skills that I can apply to any scenario in the real world, workforce, or college.”

In a rapidly-changing world of AI and machine learning, we are increasingly aware of the need for human beings who understand empathy and ethics, who know how to collaborate to build stronger solutions, and who can manage projects and people.

CAST offers a variety of leadership opportunities to students, much like we offer internships and now apprenticeships, partly because we believe in behaving the way we are asking other employers to behave.

Jeanne Russell

Executive Director

CAST Schools