High school students and businesses soon will be working together in Butler County classrooms.

Thanks to an Education and Business Initiative by the United Way of Butler County, several school districts are establishing hands-on projects between classrooms and businesses, with teacher training sessions this past week and full project implementation in the spring.

The idea was developed after an education summit in November 2013, said Kierston Hobaugh, director of results and performance at United Way.

“They’ll still be doing their regular learning, but it would be a project-based learning style instead of a textbook style,” she said.

“But then they’d be able to incorporate the various soft skills, the teamwork, the leadership. They’re going to have to make a presentation back to the company, using public speaking skills, presentation preparation, all of those other skills that you need in the workplace, but aren’t necessarily singled out to be taught in the schools.”

Teachers from Butler, Butler County Area Vocational-Technical, South Butler, Karns City, Slippery Rock and Mars schools were trained Wednesday and Thursday about the important industry terms and the best practices to teach in a high school class.

Joe Cunningham, vo-tech director, said the program will provide more hands-on learning in STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

“I think a lot of schools are starting to see merit of applied math and sciences ... And how it is aligned with the STEM initiative,” Cunningham said.

“The other thing is the job opportunities — the manufacturing industry, the Marcellus Shale industry, even the hospital industry is so technically driven, and we need those jobs.”

In the spring, teachers and students will work with several companies, including Oberg, XTO Energy, Penn United Technologies, West Penn Power, Adagio Health and Future Point of Sales.

“For the counselors and the administrators, it would be a way to talk with the students and their families more about the jobs that are available in Butler County, and the growing jobs like the manufacturing and industry jobs,” Hobaugh said of the project.

The project will act as a job shadowing opportunity while incorporating educational points from their classes, she said.

Scott Dietz, a work force initiatives manager with Catalyst Connection in Pittsburgh, called the two-day training a “language translation” between education and industry.

“Project-based learning is all about hands-on, engaged, real life, relevant learning in the classroom. So we give them some of the best practices and knowledge about that,” Dietz said.

“What’s unique is we’ve infused into that some best practices in industry. So we know that in industry, we have some great best practices around how to solve problems.”

Catalyst Connection, an economic development group, is running the teacher training sessions with Asset Inc., an educator training group.

Dietz said best practices are twofold: in education, with project-based learning, and in industry with “knowledge, skills and methods that are utilized every day in industry as a whole, with problem solving and project management.”

Scott Covert, an instructor with Penn United Technologies, said the partnership also is a great opportunity to show teachers and students alike what industry is like.

“Manufacturing is very clean, very high tech. We need very highly skilled students coming out of high school,” Covert said. “Not the ones that weren’t good enough or didn’t have enough ambition to go to college or pursue something else. Now we want that same group of people that were previously sent to college, we want them to be aware that there’s actually an opportunity right out of high school.”

He said Penn United and some other manufacturing companies provide college reimbursement for their employees, another benefit for those in-demand jobs.

Teachers toured the Penn United facility in Cabot on Thursday as part of their training.

Tad Campagna, a physics teacher at Butler High School, said he hopes the hands-on projects he does in the classroom with building skateboards and robots can be transitioned into project designs at local businesses.

He said the training has been insightful.

“They’re giving us a little more feedback and a little more guidance,” Campagna said. “The next step for me is to rewrite my projects and think of new ones.”

He said working with teachers from other districts has given him a broadened perspective, too.

“It’s pretty good to hear what everyone else is doing,” he said.