Vital Link Project Prepares Students for Work World : Employment: The program, one of three pilots nationally, teaches academically average youths how to choose and succeed with a vocation.

Once shy and adrift, high school senior Michelle Knapp says she now has a career focus and a secret weapon: a three-step method for handling criticism.

First, the 17-year-old Los Alamitos high student explains, she tries the sponge approach, in which she “sits there and takes it.” If that’s not appropriate, she says, she tries “prompt and paraphrase,” which means restating to the critic what she has just heard.

And if that fails, she says, she initiates the “five-part confrontation,” outlining her personal reaction to the criticism. “That’s very effective,” said Knapp, who plans to study retail fashion at a specialized school after she graduates.

Knapp learned her new coping skills through Vital Link, a program that is teaching thousands of academically average Orange County students how to choose a vocation and succeed at it. One of three pilot projects nationally, the local program combines classroom instruction with job training aimed specifically at those who will join the work force immediately after high school.

“It’s the biggest thing right now in our schools,” said Lorraine Dageforde, business and education partnership specialist for the Orange County Department of Education. Historically, she said, public schools have concentrated on the college-bound and the low achievers.

“We’ve been ignoring the 50% in the middle,” Dageforde said. “We’ve been shortchanging those students.”

Initiated four years ago by the American Business Conference, a Washington-based group of 100 chief executives of mid-size companies, Vital Link grew out of a series of national studies concluding that America’s C students, who are the core of the work force, must shore up their job skills. Otherwise, the reports concluded, the nation’s ability to compete in a global economy could be hampered.

“There are a growing number of adults who don’t have the lifelong learning attitude that you need to move and compete in the 21st Century,” Dageforde said. “Without these programs, students will be more likely to fall into dead-end jobs.”

About a dozen Orange County school districts have already integrated elements of the career training program into the curricula, county education officials say. To varying degrees, every high school in the county will have a similar program in place within four years.

Though Vital Link pilot programs are also operating in Texas and New Jersey, the Orange County version is considered the most advanced, education officials say.

“We hope it will be a model for California and the country,” said Sheela Mehta, director of community services at FHP International Inc. and coordinator for the Fountain Valley health-maintenance organization’s participation in Vital Link.

The partnership between schools and business puts Orange County a few steps ahead of a 1994 federal initiative called the School-to-Work Opportunities Act. Designed to ease a student’s transition from high school to the working world, the federal act will make as much as $10 million available to California schools over the next five years.

Meanwhile, Vital Link is flourishing on an annual budget of less than $100,000. Its secret has been to appeal successfully to the business community.

Hundreds of small businesses and about 30 major corporations--among them Western Digital Corp. in Irvine and the Newport Beach office of Coopers & Lybrand, a national accounting firm--provide guest speakers, offer internships and set up “job shadowing,” which gives a student a firsthand look at a specific occupation by pairing him or her with a worker for a full shift on the job.

Businesses say they see mutual benefits in such programs.

“We felt we were spending so much money after we hired employees that we thought we should do something about it beforehand,” Mehta of FHP said. “We decided to provide training for high school students, a group we had never reached out to before.”

“They are our future work force,” she said, “and we want to build it.”

That building process at Los Alamitos High School, which boasts the county’s most comprehensive Vital Link program, lasts for three years. Along with their firsthand look at specific jobs, students study resume writing, job interview techniques and communication skills--such as how to handle criticism.

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Students rank the class among their favorites and have especially high praise for the frequent role-playing sessions and group projects. This month, students formed teams to develop, market and sell fictitious products.

“This class is much more interesting than my other ones,” said Michelle Sampson, a 15-year-old who has a part-time job at a local accounting firm. “In every other class, I have to sit down and listen to a teacher for an hour. In here, we are more relaxed, and we aren’t afraid to talk.”

Among the most satisfying experiences, students say, is the job shadowing. That part of the program has sent students out to observe such diverse jobs as Disneyland ride operator, aerial photographer, firefighter and magazine editor.

“You hear someone is a manager, but you really don’t know exactly what they do until you see it,” said junior Lisa Perlstein.

Considering a career in child development, Perlstein chose to shadow a birthing instructor.

“We may learn how you get pregnant in school,” said the 17-year-old, whose older sister is expecting a child this spring. “But in the class you find out what happens to your body after that.”

By the end of the century, county education officials hope something called an “employability transcript” will be as much as part of a student’s permanent record as a diploma and academic transcript are now.

More than a list of class grades, the new transcript will inform potential employers about a student’s abilities in such areas as problem solving, word processing, even punctuality. Businesses would have access to a student’s transcript through the county’s central computer.

On such a transcript, Los Alamitos junior Patrick Hayes would probably get high marks for his people skills. After Vital Link, the 17-year-old bodyboarding enthusiast and convenience store stock clerk said he handles criticism much better.

Vital Link “helped me a lot in getting along with people,” he said. “My boss would blame stuff on me. But instead of snapping back at him, I try to be polite. . . . He’s been very understanding since I started that.”