About six months ago, I was preparing for my final interview to become CAST’s Executive Director. The board had asked me to tell my leadership story, and like many educators, I started where I thought I should—with a slide deck that looked a lot like my resume. It highlighted twenty-five years in education, my family, and the organizations I support. It told people what I had done. It didn’t explain how those experiences had impacted me.
Just before that interview, I visited Crosstown High School in Memphis. What stayed with me wasn’t the projects students completed. It was how clearly they could explain how they had grown. They didn’t just describe what they had learned; they used evidence to describe how they had changed.
Sitting in the airport afterward, I realized I needed to do the same. My resume explained what I had done. My leadership story needed to explain who I had become because of it.
A few weeks ago, I saw that same idea come to life during an exit interview with Brooke, our Project Management Apprentice (who is also a CAST Tech alum and who gave me permission to share her story). We were listening for evidence that after completing her years in a CAST school and after working in the CAST nonprofit office, she knew something she didn’t used to know about herself and about the world of work. We were curious about her future plans. We were curious about the way her life experiences are shaping her self concept and her ambitions.
Over lunch, Brooke told Eddie, our Senior Partnership Director, and me her story. She told us that in high school she would have described herself as someone who laid low. Reserved and quiet, she says she sat in the back of the room, content to go unnoticed. At CAST Tech, project-based learning and career-connected experiences helped her develop her collaboration and teamwork skills. She applied and earned the role of Partnership Coordinator Intern. Originally interested in microbiology, it was her internship that helped her discover what she truly enjoyed: Event planning, hosting visitors, making connections, plus leading a team of campus ambassadors and seeing them grow.
After high school, Brooke entered the workforce, working as a restaurant hostess, retail sales associate, and leasing agent before a former teacher called about a new project management apprenticeship at CAST Schools. Brooke seized the opportunity. She wasn’t sure exactly what project management was, but she recognized that this could be a change she needed.
By her own admission, Brooke says sometimes she struggles with feeling or staying motivated but the learn-and-earn model she experienced as a Project Management Apprentice provided her with a structure and rewards system that kept her engaged and motivated. Over her time as an apprentice, she earned her PMI Project Management Certification, her Google Project Manager Certificate and is on her way to earn her Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM).
At CAST, Brooke led the team’s weekly scrum and programming meetings for the entire staff, learned to coordinate a Senior Hiring Fair, and chaired the CAST Alumni Straight-to-Work Steering Committee. The certifications and experience made her resume stand out. In July, Brooke will begin a promotions and marketing role with Zenith Promotions. She’s simultaneously pursuing a Business Management degree, starting at San Antonio College then transferring to Texas A&M-San Antonio.
What struck us most wasn’t Brooke’s certifications or even her new job. It was that she now had the language to describe herself differently. She could connect experiences to strengths, setbacks to growth, and work to purpose. She wasn’t simply more employable. She understood herself more deeply.
Listening to Brooke, I realized she and I had experienced the same revelation. Neither of us changed overnight. We simply learned to recognize our own growth and tell that story with evidence.
That may be one of the most important outcomes a school can produce.
Which is why at CAST we keep asking ourselves…How do we know we’re getting better? How do we know our students are getting better? And what evidence truly matters?
These questions will drive the work we engage in this year. Summer is always a time of deep planning for educators and these questions are top of mind for our CAST network leaders and our principals as we spend these months preparing for teachers and students to return.
Central to our plans are these beliefs:
- Every young person has a gift and our job is to help them unlock it.
- Students deserve real work before graduation.
- Relationships are the foundation for learning.
Our goal has never been simply to graduate students who are ready for college or careers. We want young people to leave our schools knowing what they are good at, how they have grown, and what they contribute to the world around them. When students can recognize those things in themselves and support them with real evidence, they walk into interviews, workplaces, and communities with a different kind of confidence.
None of us builds that future alone. It takes educators, families, employers, mentors, and a community willing to invest in young people. I hope you’ll follow our journey this year as we continue asking difficult questions, sharing what we’re learning, and inviting you into the conversation. Together, we can help more young people discover not only what they can do, but who they are becoming.