About Us

The Northeast Colorado Postsceondary and Workforce Readiness Partnership is a grant funded by the El Pomar Foundation. Our main purpose is to support rural school districts in Northeast Colorado in "helping students and their families make informed life decisions through meaningful career conversations." We are forming partnerships among school personnel, parents, businesses, and local communities to take on a significant role in helping prepare students for postsecondary and workforce readiness.

We seek to provide programs and services to aid in the career development process of students beginning in elementary and continuing through high school. Creating business partnerships with schools is a key focus for us by helping schools to offer experiences or participating in job shadowing, internships, apprenticeships, mock interviews, career fairs, classroom speakers, career development institutes, and business visits. It is important to understand how we view each of those terms to understand how they can help students.

Job Shadowing -- Job shadowing is a work experience option where students learn about a job by walking through the work day as a shadow to a competent worker. The job shadowing work experience is a temporary, unpaid exposure to the workplace in an occupational area of interest to the student.

Internship (paid and unpaid) -- An internship is a paid or unpaid position where a student works in a business in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification. (Please review the Legal and Ethical Issues of Work Based Learning video on this website.)

Apprenticeship (paid and unpaid) -- An apprenticeship is a method of learning in which a student will learn a craft or trade by hands-on experience while working with a skilled worker. (Please review the Legal and Ethical Issues of Work Based Learning video on this website.)

Mock Job Interview -- A mock interview is an simulation of a job interview used for training purposes. The conversational exercise usually resembles a real interview as closely as possible for the purpose of providing a realistic experience for students.

Career Fair -- A career fair is an event in which many employers and students come together in a central location in order for students to learn about careers. Usually, each employer will have their own table and about 20 minutes to make a presentation and answer questions for a group of students. The employers will do this several times while students rotate to different tables each round.

Career Development Institute – The Career Development Institute (CDI) is an event that teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents attend to learn more about local careers. We bring in a wide variety of speakers to talk about work based learning. Additionally, attendees have an opportunity to visit your business to learn about local careers and what jobs are highly needed in our communities.

Classroom Speaker – Classroom speakers are business people invited by a teacher to talk about your business and introduce a unit or lesson the classroom teacher is introducing. Classroom speakers may be asked into kindergarten through high school classrooms.

Business Visit – Small groups of students attending a business visit will get a chance to see how a business works and see what careers are available. This experience helps aid students to gain a deeper understanding of what levels of education are needed for entry, mid-management, and ownership levels of employment.