Internship Corner

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Meet Celines: Smoothie Maker in Training at Barry’s Bootcamp Fuel Bar

Ever wonder about the types of internship jobs our SKILLs students do? With six career cluster areas to choose from (including food service, clerical and retail) students travel across NYC to a variety of exciting job sites.

One of Cooke’s newest internship partners—Barry’s Bootcamp—employs three SKILLs students (including Celines) in its fitness studios in Chelsea and NoHo. Celines uses her budding smoothie-making talents (and winning smile) to help create healthy smoothies in the Barry’s Bootcamp Fuel Bar at their Chelsea location. Yum!

Two other interns—at the Barry’s in Chelsea and NoHo—work in Barry’s maintenance department. All are gaining valuable work experience while bringing their individual talents to their new workplaces.

In the coming months, we’ll be spotlighting other internship sites as part of a new series on Cooke’s internship program. Stay tuned as we uncover and share more about the student internship experience, and the ways in which students develop new career readiness skills via on-the-job training. 

Grants Update:

Cooke and Moody’s to Publish Neurodiversity White Paper

You may have heard about new neurodiversity hiring practices taking place within tech companies like SAP and Microsoft. There’s a developing trend among these large companies to attract and recruit people with autism spectrum disorder (and a facility for high-level technical skills) through their diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Cooke, along with our partners at Moody’s, wondered if these initiatives could be broadened to include individuals with other types of developmental disabilities. What digital skills would be most helpful in preparing our students to take on IT support roles (e.g., data entry clerk, help desk assistants)? In the coming months, Cooke and Moody’s will publish the white paper, which we hope will garner support among diversity and inclusion officers, HR professionals and nonprofits. Exploring these workforce development initiatives is one important way to begin the collective work of expanding career opportunities for our students.

Stay tuned for the release of the white paper!

Coin Campaign

Cooke’s annual coin campaign is in full swing! Students and families are bringing in their coins (and dollars) for inclusion in the collection. This event always boosts our school spirit and our students feel a sense of great pride knowing that they are helping to fundraise for their school! Our goal is school-wide participation, and families can send in any amount of change to be counted. A little change goes a long way!

Ways to participate:
• Send in your change to help increase the funds raised by the Cooke community.
The final collection day is TOMORROW, Thursday, October 24th!
• Spread the word! Encourage the people in your networks to #SupportCooke by donating their change to Cooke. Everyone can participate … every coin counts!

2020 Building Snapshot

We’re well on our way to completion of our new school building! It’s been a journey, but it has been amazing watching our dream become a reality. We are on schedule to open in Fall 2020, and we look forward to taking our programming bandwidth to new heights in our new state-of-the art building. We are so excited!
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Mark Your Calendars!

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