Different Ways to Incorporate Career Choices into Your School
 Use the Career Choices curriculum for a required freshman transition or career exploration course.
Much as we would like students to learn for the love of learning, most young people need the added incentive of seeing how the subject at hand relates to their place in the world. Career Choices offers instant relevancy. In addition, it graphically illustrates personal benefits--what they have to gain from staying in school and putting forth their best effort. Finally, it gives them an opportunity to create a plan for their lives that offers guidance on bringing that plan to fruition.
This curriculum saves your staff hundreds of hours of planning time. Your English, math, and social studies instructors can easily join together to deliver a proven, interdisciplinary course using the Career Choices text and workbook, the Possibilities anthology, and Lifestyle Math. Academics will have more meaning for the learner.
Incorporate the Career Choices curriculum into your ninth grade English or language arts program.
In this format all students receive a comprehensive career guidance experience in an academic classroom. Career Choices is, first and foremost, a competency based curriculum. Students build basic reading, writing, and speaking skills through assignments in both the Career Choices text (along with the Workbook and Portfolio) and the literature anthology, Possibilities. Works by such renowned writers as James Thurber, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Robert Fulghum, Emily Dickenson, O. Henry, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are included in this companion anthology. Discussion questions, activities, composition assignments, grammar, and vocabulary lessons meet your state's English/language arts content standards and, at the same time, build on the highly motivational themes of career and choices.
Create a Dual Enrollment Freshman Transition Course.
Help your students develop comprehensive 10-year plans with the Career Choices curriculum while reaping the added benefits of dual enrollment in a rigorous dual enrollment freshman transition course. Dual enrollment encourages students to see themselves as college students, gives them the confidence that they can complete college-level work, and earn credits on their college transcripts, which studies show increases the likelihood that students will enroll in college after high school. A dual enrollment freshman transition course also provides an excellent forum for helping students to start thinking about college options in their freshman year while they still have time to plan their courses appropriately and get adequate grades to be eligible for admission to the school of their choice. Click to read about Santa Barbara City College’s pioneering efforts in developing this model based on the George Washington University Freshman Transition Initiative.
Use the Career Choices curriculum as a Launch Course to Career Academies or Pathways.
Career academies or pathways are a great way to help students get career-focused and start building specialized job skills early on, but how will your students know which career pathway is right for them? Too many students are left to their own devices to make arbitrary decisions and, without knowing their specific reasons for pursuing a particular path, lack the motivation to perform up to their potential. Many schools structured around different career tracks effectively require a course using Career Choices for students entering the school before they make a definitive decision about which pathway they would like to pursue. This helps students to make informed decisions and gives them a strong incentive to excel.
What are the goals and methodology of the Career Choices curriculum?
Career Choices is a curriculum designed to address career and life planning, topics of concern to all young people. It demonstrates the relevance of education, thus motivating teens to: apply themselves to their studies; help adolescents establish and consolidate identity; foster ambitious yet realistic career plans; and teach the skills and attitudes necessary for success at home and on the job in the 21st century.
The curriculum meets these admittedly ambitious goals by focusing on a topic of infinite interest to teens: themselves. The engaging text takes students through a sequential series of activities that help them uncover the traits, interests, and other characteristics that make them unique and valuable. Armed with this information, they move through another series of exercises that helps them decide what they want from their lives. They begin to understand how education relates to a satisfying future lifestyle. Next, students gain skills and attitudes necessary to the attainment of their goals. Finally, they develop a ten-year plan, outlining step by step how they intend to achieve the job--the life--of their dreams.
Sample measurable goals and objectives for grant proposals:
Upon completion of the class, ___% of students will have raised their career goals and expectations as demonstrated by pre- and post-surveys.
Upon completion of the class, ___% of students who, at the beginning of the class, had not planned any further education or training after high school will have changed their minds and will be preparing for post-secondary education.
Upon completion of the class, ___% of the students in the course will have changed their attitude toward academic subjects and, therefore, increased their performance, as evaluated by pre and post survey of their other teachers.
Upon completion of the class, each student will have a realistic educational and career plan for the next ten years. They will also be able to demonstrate the goal setting, analytical, and decision-making skills necessary to adapt that plan as they mature.
Upon completion of this class, all females will be able to articulate, in a quantitative way, why becoming a teen parent is not a good plan. Females who were ambivilent about teen pregnancy at the beginning of the course will have a strong opinion and attitude against teen parenting.
Students completing this course will be less likely to drop out of high school. This will be demonstrated by decreasing the drop out rate among the graduates of this program from ____% (current school average) to ____%
Test scores within academic subjects (define which ones) will increase by _____ within one semester of completing this course.
In post-class surveys, ___% of graduates' parents will report a positive impact on their child due to this classroom experience.
|
