PRESS & REVIEWS
REVIEWS
Patty Alper Outlines How to Successfully Guide Younger Generations to be Successful and Why it’s Important
“You might not be drawn to Teach to Work unless you’re in the teaching or mentoring arena. If that’s not you, stay with me anyway. This book has good things to say about how we train and teach the next generation.”
Podcast: Equipping the Next Generation of Construction Professionals
On season 3, episode 3 of the Build Better podcast, Anastasia welcomes Patty Alper, president of marketing and consulting company Alper Portfolio Group. She is working to address the workforce shortage in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries by educating students through mentorships and meaningful on-the-job experience…
How the “Teach to Work” Mentorship Program is Equipping the Next Generation of Construction Professionals
Patty Alper is passionate about the impact of mentoring. After 23 years mentoring young people, the founder of the Teach to Work program, and author of the book, Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Mentee, and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap in America, has an ambitious goal: to bring experience-based learning to colleges and technical schools all over the country, a model she has trademarked “Project-based Mentoring.” …
Knowledge Impact Network
KIN Communications
KIN’s first Impact Report highlights its initial round of Social Venture Partners, ranging from the UN World Food Programme’s phone app, ShareTheMeal, to Teach to Work, a recipe for Project Based Mentoring™ to help bring young people into the workforce, and Dignity Moves, which builds transitional housing villages for the homeless in California…
Society of Fellows Impact
Aspen Society of Fellows
Patty first became involved with the Aspen Institute in 2003 to fulfill her ongoing pursuit of adult education. One of the first Aspen Institute programs she ever attended was a Justice & Society Program featuring former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun and was a program she said she will never forget. Since then she has attended almost every Aspen Ideas Festival. Patty said that her perspective and the ideas captured in her book “Teach to Work” were greatly influenced by the Aspen Institute programs and seminars that she attended over the years. The Institute has been a significant part of her life, and we are grateful that Patty has been a member of the Society of Fellows since 2003!
Now is the Time to Launch a Mentorship Program
When I consult with corporations and higher education institutions about establishing mentorship programs, I’m often asked about the benefits. Let me take a brief moment to tell you the bevy of reasons that your company should consider such a program — and why now is a better time than ever before.
The Characteristics and Benefits of Mentoring in Today’s Workplace
I have often been asked why corporations should expend their resources on mentorship programs—including programs that exist within their walls, and/or those that expand outwardly to the community. And in both cases, my answer is the same: because everyone, including the mentors, the mentees, and the corporation, will benefit. Employees will develop leadership skills and stronger working relationships, learn new skills and interests, they will become part of something bigger, and they will grow professionally. And corporations will see more employee engagement, retention, happiness, and even increased community relations.
Build Loyalty, Break Down Hierarchies, and Recruit Better Talent With Mentorship Programs
Do executive skills primarily come from the things a person learns as a subordinate? Do great leaders acquire the ability to inspire and lead from work experience alone, or do other relationships and activities influence it as well? Imagine what would happen if a company actively challenged its employees to encourage growth and provide new learning opportunities — even outside of the workplace.
65 Ways to Celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Week 2021
Random Acts of Kindness Week 2021 kicks off on Valentine’s Day this year and runs through Feb. 20, 2021—meaning you can have seven heart-warming days of giving back. February 17 is also celebrated as Random Act of Kindness Day, so whether you plan on doing good deeds the whole week or on their designated special day, it all counts—and Parade has rounded up 65 random acts of kindness ideas to inspire you. Best of all? You can actually do most of these all right from your phone. See tip #15!
Seven Ways Mentorship Can Benefit Employees
As much as my learning experience has been multifaceted and wondrous, none of my efforts have been dearer to my heart—or as rewarding—as when I started mentoring. In parallel to running a consulting practice, I started mentoring underprivileged students in my community through a program called The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). When I told other businesspeople about it and got them involved, they too stepped up. I observed a win/win/win for the school, for the practitioner—mentors, and most importantly for the students.
Mentoring is a Choice
Much has been written about the skills gap in America. The lack of qualified workers is having a major impact on the nation’s economy. These are comments from Bryan Albrecht.
How Female Executives Can Mentor during a Pandemic—And Why They Should
Mentorship’s best practices can and do spark change: confidence, innovation, leadership, motivation, collaboration, a spirit of generosity, loyalty, and so much more.
5 Things That Should Be Done To Improve The US Educational System
By Penny Bauder, Authority Magazine and Thrive Global
Essentially, this idea, this methodology, is about knowledge transfer. But this is not knowledge from an educator, a theoretician, or a book — rather it is knowledge transferred from an expert in the field, a hands-on practitioner. The idea is simple: “learning from doers, and learning by doing.”
Women and Mentoring
Motherhood Moment
See how Patty answers questions like “What are unique challenges for women brought on by COVID?” and “How can female professionals help support the next generation?”
Read the full interview here.
Mentoring – The Most Valuable Gift You Can Offer During a Pandemic: Yourself
Recruiting Daily
I believe there’s no higher value than sharing your knowledge and touching a person’s life. And now, more than ever, that value is in dire need. Our younger work colleagues and young adults are witnessing a wildly and quickly changing world, and most of us cannot point to anything we’ve gone through that is remotely similar.
Feeling burned out at work? It doesn’t have to be that way
By Rachel Schnalzer, Los Angeles Times
Alper specifically recommends structuring a company mentorship program around projects that mentor-mentee pairs can complete together. Having a learning opportunity can often serve as an antidote to burnout, and the program doesn’t need to take up a ton of time, Alper says: “Starting a mentorship program for even a small office could be demanding as little as 45 minutes a week.”
The full interview can be found here.
Employers should create mentorship programs if they want to hire more diverse students for their internship programs
By Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter
“I recommend welcoming diversity through a company’s actions as well as their words. I think it would be important to have a strategy in place that includes diversity and inclusion on a company website with specific programs that are actionable, supportive, and welcoming. One such program I suggest would be to have a New Employee Mentor Program such that a seasoned employee would be assigned to a new employee who helps them navigate the inroads and to support key project assignments with goal setting, master planning, collaboration, grit to work through hypotheses that run awry, and practice sessions and reviews to prepare new mentees for final oral presentations or written summaries. These steps ensure success, training, and kindness…”
The full interview can be found here.
Mentors Enhance Project-Based Learning
By Tom Vander Ark, Forbes
Project-based mentoring has at least seven benefits to students. “Patty Alper adds an eighth benefit. She wants every kid to have a mentor and thinks projects are the right place to connect.”
The full interview can be found here.
Giving Young Adults “Veto Power” Sets Them for Success as Adults
By Tiffany Merritt, Stuff Parents Need
“I am a firm believer that success and perseverance should be taught in the home. I have seen too many cases where it is not. The tone parents set, and the boundaries outlined as adolescents become adults, can make a tremendous difference in the young adults’ abilities to navigate relationships and careers in the 21st century.
In Robert D. Putnam’s recent book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, he details how dramatically different it is to be a young adult today, and how several factors can lead to an inequity of opportunity for our youngest populations. He suggests that in contrast to when we were all adolescents, youth today cannot escape the risk factors that infiltrate their school, community, and home environments. We need to be doing something different.”
The full interview can be found here.
BOOK REVIEW
By Phil Klutz
You might not be drawn to Teach To Work unless you are in the teaching or mentoring arena. If that’s not you, stay with me anyway. This book has good things to say about how we train and teach the next generation. This will be important for us as business people and families. Written by Patty Alper in 2017, Teach To Work outlines what she has learned and how to be successful in guiding younger generations to be successful in the world.
Alper hits the ground running in the introduction and first chapter by outlining why mentorship is so important and how it benefits students, mentors, and the companies that sponsor mentors. … The full review can be found here.
Mentors as Applied Learning Teachers
WORLD CONGRESS ON APPLIED LEARNING
Donald Miller (2017) asserts that good stories usually have a guide or mentor in them to guide the hero of the story. The guide is not always necessary to the story but he/ she makes the story better. For example, the story of Stars Wars might not have been as engaging, had it not been for Obi-Wan Kenobi, and later Yoda, guiding Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan and Yoda functioned not just as teachers but as mentors who were Jedi themselves and provided individual attention to their mentoree Luke Skywalker by helping him attain the skills he needed to become a skilled Jedi. They mentored him not through lectures but by helping him gain the skills by applying the knowledge that they gave him and by passing on their knowledge to him. TVET learners need this same mentorship to gain the skills that they need to thrive in their careers.
Mentoring Kids To Teach Them Critical Workplace Skills
MODERN WORKPLACE LEARNING
“Patty Alper, author of the new book Teach to Work, has a clever idea addressing two big national issues: the employers’ plea to get young hires with essential workplace skills and the desire by Americans over 50 to give back, especially by helping the nation’s youth. Alper calls it “project-based mentorship.” That means a person with decades of business experience mentors a student on a project the child devises, plans and implements.”
GIVING YOUR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT TOOLS – AND CONFIDENCE – FOR SUCCESS
MASTERY ACADEMICS
When GE polled business executives from 25 countries at their Global Innovation Barometer meeting, the biggest concern was a need to better align the education systemteach to work with business needs. In addition, a recent Gallup study, Great Lives Great Jobs, asked business leaders a series of similar questions regarding preparedness of students for future employment. The response was clear and speaks volumes to our schools. According to the business leaders, we are failing to provide recent graduates with the requisite skills. In fact, only 11% of business executives agreed that college graduates have the skills their workplace needs. Yet in striking contrast, 96% of chief academic officers at colleges and universities stated they believed their institution was effective at preparing students for employment.
Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management
Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC)
Are you a professor of an environmental science discipline—toxicology, risk assessment or contaminated sites–with an interest in engaging students in real world challenges? Are you a consulting or industry scientist that can contribute to building capabilities by mentoring and ‘hands-on’ training of young people entering your field? Teach to Work is a book you would find compelling. Alper makes a strong case for changing learning paradigms to include and integrate practical, project-based, experiential learning into current secondary and college curricula. The book will have widespread appeal in corporate and academic realms–particularly sectors suffering from skills gaps–as well as or educators and their affiliated organizations. I wholeheartedly support Ms. Alper’s call to action for a cultural revolution featuring mentoring as a foundational learning and skills development activity.
Innovative education programs key to future job markets, experts say
TheStar.com
There’s a lot of teeth gnashing these days about how our kids aren’t going to be equipped for the workforce of the future. Should they all learn to code? Should they get a jump-start on the entrepreneurial life with lemonade stands and dog walking?
Providing Contextualized Learning Through Mentorship
Getting Smart
Too often school initiatives, whether they promote technology or grammar or social-emotional wellness, are offered up in a void. They have no real context in which to unfold, and they are spooned into the school day like so many doses of cough syrup. Thus, they become all too easy to dismiss, as valuable as they may be, because they offer no real context for learning.
Is This the Best Way to Build Leaders?
HRM Online
Is this the best way to build leaders? HR professionals know the great value of in-house mentorship programs, but encouraging your staff to leave the office and teach outsiders can be just as valuable for creating leaders.
Teach to Work: Critically Important and Highly Recommended
Midwest Book Review
Synopsis: From the birth of our nation to the recent crushing defeat of the first female presidential candidate, “Remember the Ladies: Celebrating Those Who Fought for Freedom at the Ballot Box” by Angela P. Dodson (who is currently a contributing editor for Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, and has served as senior editor for The New York Times and executive editor of Black Issues Book Review) highlights women’s impact on United States politics and government.
Mentoring Kids to Teach Them Critical Work Skills
Forbes’ Richard Eisenberg
Patty Alper, author of the new book Teach to Work, has a clever idea addressing two big national issues: the employers’ plea to get young hires with essential workplace skills and the desire by Americans over 50 to give back, especially by helping the nation’s youth. Alper calls it “project-based mentorship.” That means a person with decades of business experience mentors a student on a project the child devises, plans and implements.
Why Mentors Are Needed to Spark Future Entrepreneurs
Huffington Post’s Martin Zwilling
As a long-time mentor and advisor to new business owners, I can attest to both the need for mentoring, and the satisfaction that comes from watching an aspiring but tentative entrepreneur grow into someone capable of changing the world. Business is not rocket science, and one-on-one guidance face-to-face, with a real project, trumps the classroom and mistakes every time.
Review of ‘Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Mentee, and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap in America’
Charles Ashbacher, Amazon Top 50 Reviewer
“Five out of five stars”
This book is definitely the old made new again, a concept just as valuable now as it was at the dawn of humanity and the cooperative hunt. The theme is directed education based on the mentor/mentee relationship that was known for millennia (and in Star Wars) as the master/apprentice. A person with expertise in a field develops a relationship with a student where they teach them their skills, give them projects to work on, then coach them through the production process.