School-community relationships are essential in establishing a holistic environment where learners can attain essential knowledge and practical skills to achieve a unified set of behaviors and expectations both within their current learning environment and in their future careers. In this context, learning institutions often establish community partnerships to expand both the ways and time students can learn during summers, after school, and through expanded schooling sessions (Melville et al., 2006). These partnerships are mainly collaborative and respective associations between learning institutions and outside communities and organizations tailored to offer academic enrichment activities, including behavioral support, community engagement, and tutoring programs for students. During my learning sessions in this course, I learned the significance of establishing positive school-community associations and partnerships to provide essential knowledge and skills I could apply in my current learning environment and my future practice as a cosmetologist.
Cosmetology and Community
Cosmetology is generally a business-based occupation associated with performing relaxing and cosmetic skin treatments to a client’s body and face for beauty enhancements. During my learning period, I have engaged in events involving partnerships between my learning institution and the community, which have shaped my perspective of the profession. In particular, within the school environment, I have learned that students mainly engage in theoretical approaches through discussions, assignments, and tests. However, engaging in school-community partnership programs is essential in promoting a lifelong learning process in which students can effectively apply the learned theoretical knowledge in a practical setting. The cosmetology profession is mainly associated with more practical activities than theoretical ones.
Furthermore, through the school-community partnership programs, I have learned that these programs have the potential to assist the student in harnessing their natural interest in how and where they live, including using the community as an essential resource to expand my knowledge and actions both in my current learning process and in my future career. Specifically, my initial perception of cosmetology, especially when linking it with the community, was that it is predominantly female. However, after interacting with cosmetologists and beauticians around my community, I noted that while extant literature emphasizes the workers in cosmetology and hairdressing are predominantly women, men are increasingly interested in the profession. Most importantly, gender is not a variable that determines a cosmetologist’s or beautician’s success. Instead, how a beautician relates to and interacts with clients and other community members is essential in safeguarding a successful career in cosmetology. In this context, through community-school partnerships, I have learned that the community has been and will always be an essential resource that will guide me in complementing and reinforcing not only my learning experience through the practical knowledge I have attained but my culture and societal values necessary for the success of my future career.
Things Beauticians can do to get active in their community
One of the essential things I have learned concerning school-community associations includes the significance of giving back to the community. In particular, I have attended multiple salons in my neighborhood and interacted with several beauticians. One of the beauticians once told me that the role of a beautician is not only to make the clients look beautiful and satisfied. Miss Jane told me that her business has expanded exponentially because of the quality of service she offers and through giving back to the community. According to the stakeholder theory, the success of any business enterprise involves the creation of value not only for the stakeholders but shareholders (Freeman, 2009). In this context, aside from the salon’s owner and customers, the relationship between the other community members and the business organization is essential in ensuring the business enterprise succeeds. In this context, during my future career in the beauty and cosmetics sector, I plan to ensure my cosmetics business or any organization I work for gives back to the community by making significant contributions to important events that unite the entire community served by the business.
Community Partnerships
Community partnerships are crucial for increasing the relationships and resources necessary for student activities and learning processes. In particular, I come from an economically and socially marginalized community where I have limited access to advantages and privileges that the dominant communities and classes of people often enjoy, like having a family with strong personal and professional connections in the business world. Consequently, most students and people like me in my community often believe that while learning is vital in gaining knowledge and skills essential for building a career in the future, more is needed to enable us to sustain ourselves financially due to a lack of jobs.
However, through community partnerships with my learning environment, I significantly changed this attitude. In particular, the community partnerships have allowed me to establish social connections crucial for my future career as a cosmetologist. Specifically, I have achieved significant social capital through school-community partnerships to organize my future lifestyle and career objectives as a cosmetician. Social capital generally refers to a network of social supports that links contacts, guidance, information, and societal norms and values to enable learners to make wise decisions concerning their future careers.
Another important highlight of community partnerships involves allowing cohorts to experience job shadowing. In particular, according to CSUN Career Center (2017), job shadowing entails a learning experience that allows learners to make crucial observations from the community, including professions, to learn how they perform their daily duties. With the current rapid advancement of technology, the daily role of professional keep changing by the day. Moreover, during my learning period of this course, I have learned that when communities partner with learning institutions, the students get an essential opportunity to learn the diverse technologies and resources currently used in the job market, which are not introduced or learned in the school environment. In this context, I intend to engage in more school-community partnerships to stay updated on the current practical skills and knowledge that align with the current technological and business environment.
During my learning process, job shadowing has helped me attain a more individualized experience as a beautician. Specifically, through job shadowing, I have achieved heightened confidence in my potential to succeed as a cosmetologist since I often view myself as being in a workplace whenever I visit salons. Cosmetologists are natural beauticians. Through job shadowing, I have had the opportunity to experience a professional beautician’s daily life and obtain answers to some of the most pressing questions I previously had. For instance, I was interested in learning about the challenges that most professional beauticians encounter during their daily occupational roles. Through the job shadowing exercise organized by the school, I visited six salons. During my interactions with the workers, one crucial theme emerged concerning the challenges they faced daily among five employees: lack of motivation. Specifically, I learned that most employees, especially in salons, often strain a lot by standing for long hours attending to their clients while receiving less motivation from business owners. The decreased motivation of the workers sometimes results in low quality and efficiency of work, leading to loss of customers. This finding will be essential in my future career in planning to work with an efficient, motivated team of beauticians to meet the needs of my clients and increase their loyalty. Therefore, through job shadowing due to community partnerships, I have learned the significance of job motivation among employees to maintain their work satisfaction levels. Specifically, job motivation is essential in improving productivity and ultimately expanding any business that serves the community.
References
Melaville, A., Berg, A. C., & Blank, M. J. (2006). Community-based learning: Engaging students for success and citizenship. Coalition for Community Schools.
Freeman, R. E. (2009, October 1). What is stakeholder theory? [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIRUaLcvPe8.
CSUN Career Center. (2017, February 7). Job shadowing [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEdJJFvkJek
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