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Standards > 1997 Learning Results > Career Preparation

Career Preparation

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A successful career in the twenty-first century will differ significantly from the model of career success that has prevailed in this century. New ways of working and new technology already dictate the importance of bringing new skills to the workplace, but other changes are even more fundamental. Lifelong employment for the same employer has virtually vanished. Initial career decisions are no longer seen as lifetime determinations, but rather as first steps in a career that is likely to include work for several employers in a variety of positions.

Career preparation helps students develop the ability to handle changes. In a world of work where being a "good worker" is no longer an assurance of continued employment, career preparation serves students in several ways. It helps them acquire the basic skills and attitudes for successful entry to the world of work, it teaches them to be effective career managers and to be knowledgeable about their talents, to acknowledge their strengths, and to address their weaknesses. Career preparation enables students to recognize that challenges present opportunities and that they must be prepared to acquire new skills and new knowledge to take advantage of those opportunities.

As part of career preparation, students learn to see education, not as something to be completed in 13 or 17 years, but as a continuing process, available throughout their lives, to assist in coping with a fast-changing world. As one community college president put it, "education is a train and students must be able to get on and off as their needs change."

A. PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

Students will be knowledgeable about the world of work, explore career options, and relate personal skills, aptitudes, and abilities to future career decisions. To interact successfully with people and organizations students need to adapt to the changing nature of the workplace. Strong interpersonal, teamwork, leadership, and negotiation skills are essential for this success.

B. EDUCATION/CAREER PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

Guided by self assessment and personal career interests, students will integrate school- and work-based experiences to develop their career goals. Once career goals have been determined, students will evaluate continuously their progress and make necessary modifications. Students' success in the competitive world will depend on their ability to manage their own careers using job seeking, retention, and advancement skills.

  1. INTEGRATED AND APPLIED LEARNING

Students will demonstrate how academic knowledge and skills are applied in the workplace and other settings. Students will select and apply appropriate technological resources and problem-solving strategies to real life situations using problem solving strategies in purposeful ways.

D. BALANCING RESPONSIBILITIES

Students will acquire and apply skills/concepts required to balance personal, family, community, and work responsibilities. The skills to manage work, family, and community responsibilities for the well being of themselves and others are critical for personal success.

A. PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

Students will be knowledgeable about the world of work, explore career options, and relate personal skills, aptitudes, and abilities to future career decisions. Students will be able to:

ELEMENTARY GRADES Pre-K-2

  1. Develop effective ways to interact with others during school and after-school activities.

  2. Identify strengths and interests required in a job, at home, at school, or in the community.

  3. Identify local career opportunities.

  4. Demonstrate workplace behaviors such as punctuality, flexibility, teamwork, and perseverance.

EXAMPLES

  • Resolve playground conflict using negotiation skills.

  • Identify favorite school subjects and special talents and relate them to jobs.

  • Volunteer for specific roles in cooperative learning situations.

 

ELEMENTARY GRADES 3-4

  1. Demonstrate how positive and negative attitudes affect one's ability to work with others.

  2. Use communication and listening skills that result in successful interactions with others.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of the connections between locally generated products and services and the efforts required to create those products and services.

  4. Explain the value of work to the individual and to society in general.

  5. Demonstrate awareness of their own interests, aptitudes, and abilities.

EXAMPLES

  • Students are interviewed for a school newspaper to identify personal information which is used to develop a class profile.

  • Select a career and role-play a scenario depicting why people do this work and how it benefits others.

 

MIDDLE GRADES 5-8

  1. Determine effective workplace behaviors and skills.

  2. Use teamwork strategies and apply communication and negotiation skills to decision making.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of the characteristics of a successful business.

  4. Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship among personal interests, skills and abilities, and career research.

EXAMPLES

  • Create a collage using advertisements from successful businesses and identify common elements.

  • Given a variety of case studies showing an individual's problems on the job, create possible solutions (e.g., a worker, who is often late, has conflicts with a supervisor).

 

SECONDARY GRADES

  1. Demonstrate the leadership and membership skills necessary to succeed as a member of a team.

  2. Analyze skills and abilities required in a variety of career options and relate them to their own skills and abilities.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the changing nature of work and educational requirements.

  4. Demonstrate an understanding of basic business concepts such as profit and loss, the availability of skilled labor, market share, and customer service.

EXAMPLES

  • Prepare a personal balance sheet showing an inventory of acquired skills, qualities, and experiences needed for successful employment in a career option.

  • As a member of a team or club, analyze the importance of using collective abilities in achieving group goals and objectives.

  • Analyze and chart various aspects of personal work experiences.

 

B. EDUCATION/CAREER PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

Guided by self assessment and personal career interests, students will integrate school- and work-based experiences to develop their career goals. Students will be able to:

ELEMENTARY GRADES Pre-K-2

  1. Explore reasons why people work.

  2. Identify preparation necessary for a career of interest.

  3. Identify personal strengths and interests.

EXAMPLES

  • As a classroom, create a bar graph to classify hobbies, favorite school subjects, interests, and special talents and their relationship to working with people, information, or things.

  • Brainstorm possible questions to ask invited guest speakers who represent different careers.

 

ELEMENTARY GRADES 3-4

  1. Use a variety of resources to learn about a personally interesting career topic.

  2. Gather data and information about personal interests, abilities, and aptitudes and project likely career options.

  3. Identify job-hunting strategies and the skills necessary to hold a job.

EXAMPLE

  • Develop a personal career plan after interviewing family, relatives, or friends to determine the requirements for a career choice.

 

MIDDLE GRADES 5-8

  1. Develop a personal portfolio that contains critical personal, educational, and career information.

  2. Compare workplace environments and the education required for different occupations.

  3. Integrate school- and work-based experience to identify possible initial career goals.

EXAMPLES

  • Develop a personal learning plan with a portfolio that contains a career information survey and its findings, results of interviews, and evidence of other career research.

  • Use the World Wide Web to research a career and identify its skill standards, based upon a personal career interest.

 

SECONDARY GRADES

  1. Use a career planning process that includes self-assessment, personal development, and a career portfolio as a way to gain initial entry into the workplace.

  2. Demonstrate job seeking skills.

  3. Assess personal, educational, and career skills that are transferable among various jobs.

  4. Explain the problems and possible benefits of involuntary changes in employment, including information on what actions the employee can take to make it easier to find a new position or to become self-employed.

EXAMPLES

  • Complete the School-To-Work Individual Opportunity Plan leading to a portfolio that contains aptitude and employability assessments, interview and research methods, and a learning plan.

  • Develop a resume and model interviewing skills.

  • Interview professional employment counselors to determine the top ten skills individuals must demonstrate to get and retain a job.

  • Interview someone who has changed careers.

 

  1. INTEGRATED AND APPLIED LEARNING

Students will demonstrate how academic knowledge and skills are applied in the workplace and other settings. Students will be able to:

ELEMENTARY GRADES Pre-K-2

  1. Identify examples of technology being applied at home, school, or work.

  2. Demonstrate the effects of technology on where people choose to live, how they communicate, how they travel, and how they acquire goods and services.

  3. Use academic skills to solve real life problems.

EXAMPLES

  • Relate a story about how a school cafeteria employee uses math and English language arts skills on the job.

  • Make a diorama showing a person applying technology while at work.

 

ELEMENTARY GRADES 3-4

  1. Illustrate how products evolve as a result of technological systems.

  2. Identify the major components of a technological system (input, process, output, feedback) and cite examples in the school and/or community.

  3. Identify academic knowledge and skills required in specific careers.

EXAMPLES

  • Prepare a presentation on a career of your choice and explain how academic skills are important to success.

  • Illustrate graphically the evolution of the wheel.

  • Identify the major components of the school's water supply system.

 

MIDDLE GRADES 5-8

  1. Research the need for ethical and legal standards concerning the application of technology (including communication systems, product liability, copyright/patent, and safety).

  2. Research recent technological developments and predict their possible spin-offs.

  3. Use academic knowledge and skills to solve career related problems.

EXAMPLES

  • Use on-line sources to collect information about water quality in nearby areas and make recommendations to your local water company.

  • Design and create a next generation product and research the steps needed for a patent.

 

SECONDARY GRADES

  1. Demonstrate an understanding of the integration and application of academic and occupational skills in school learning, work, and personal lives.

  2. Demonstrate knowledge of customer satisfaction strategies.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of how humans change and adapt technology to their benefit.

  4. Use mathematical, scientific, and technological tools to design and apply solutions to a community problem.

  5. Demonstrate an understanding of workplace safety and human factors in the development of products, services or processes.

EXAMPLES

  • Identify and examine a problem in the community or school, evaluate technological resources or systems that might be used to solve the problem, justify the technological resources or systems selected, and present the results.

  • Work in a team to design and produce playground equipment for a local recreation site.

  • Work in teams to formulate an historical presentation on specific careers and to demonstrate how job requirements and training are changing due to new technology.

D. BALANCING RESPONSIBILITIES

Students will acquire and apply skills/concepts required to balance personal, family, community, and work responsibilities. Students will be able to:

ELEMENTARY GRADES Pre-K-2

  1. Identify different roles they play.

  2. Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of saving.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of the conservation of resources.

EXAMPLES

  • Create a classroom recycling project.

  • With their pictures in the center of a planning web, students will depict six roles they play.

 

ELEMENTARY GRADES 3-4

  1. Exhibit, during the school day, the personal qualities that lead to responsible behavior.

  2. Develop time management strategies for school and after-school activities.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of earning, spending, and saving in relation to personal security and the economic stability of the family.

EXAMPLES

  • Use computer technology to create a week-long schedule for school and after-school activities.

  • Explain why arriving at school and completing assignments on time would be important to an employer.

  • Create a family nutrition plan that includes basic budgeting and family menus.

 

MIDDLE GRADES 5-8

  1. Identify how critical factors such as history, the environment, the economy, or personal characteristics may affect individual and family choices.

  2. Understand and apply theories of child development and human behavior.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of budgeting and the use of financial tools and services.

  4. Develop strategies to balance multiple responsibilities and conflicting priorities.

  5. Assume personal responsibility during their time in school.

EXAMPLES

  • Create a data base to log progress in meeting three key personal responsibilities.

  • Design a day care environment that promotes the growth and development of children.

  • Create a budget for a class field trip.

 

SECONDARY GRADES

  1. Illustrate how resources and support systems, available within a community, assist individuals in their roles as workers and family members.

  2. Use knowledge and theories of growth and development to help balance multiple responsibilities.

  3. Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of community involvement to family and community life.

  4. Demonstrate an ability to manage personal resources.

EXAMPLES

  • Develop personal financial plans, justify the need for such plans, and explain their relationship to a career choice and desired lifestyle.

  • Document their current responsibilities; then, considering their own best interests and those of an elderly relative, decide whether nursing home or other types of care are indicated.

  • Create a community resource directory and put it on a World Wide Web site.