Do You Have What It Takes, Author(s): Kathy Nahor, Subject Area: C-DOS 1,2, The students will keep a journal of all career or job aspects of any project they participate in as well as feedback they receive from other students or the teacher. The students will use their journals as a reflection tool to help them assess their strengths/weaknesses or likes/dislikes for any given field, career cluster, or activity.

Do You Have What It Takes?

Learning Experience

Submitted by Kathy Nahor

TOWN OF WEBB SCHOOL
3002 St. Rt. 28
Old Forge, NY 13420
315.369.3222

LEARNING CONTEXT

C-DOS 1 Career development 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 identify skills and abilities required in a career option and relate them to their own skills and abilities.
C-DOS 2 Integrated learning students will demonstrate how academic knowledge and skills are applied in the workplace and other settings.
Determine technical skills and education needed for various careers when considering a career.
This experience would be part of most learning units of a marketing class on the commencement level.
Students should already be familiar with marketing concepts, word processing, Internet research, and developing resumes.

PROCEDURE

The students will keep a journal of all career or job aspects of any project they participate in as well as feedback they receive from other students or the teacher. The students will use their journals as a reflection tool to help them assess their strengths/weaknesses or likes/dislikes for any given field, career cluster, or activity. The teacher will incorporate role-playing and modeling of skills needed for success in the particular field, and will create opportunities for field trips and interviews with people working in the field. These experiences will occur while the students are working on a project-based unit such as designing a stadium advertising campaign or role-playing a financial advisor.

At the conclusion of the project, the student will research various jobs or careers they were exposed to and journalized during the project using Internet research sites such as http://stats.bls.gov/ocohome.htm (Bureau of Labor Statistics) and www.careermosaic.com. The students use these sites to discover education requirements, starting salary, future prospects, etc. The student will synthesize their research, journal information, and their self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses to develop a reflection paper on the careers they’ve encountered during their projects, including if they need to acquire or refine skills. Finally, the students must choose one career or jobs opening that was researched, and develop a target resume for that position. The resume should reflect the student’s research and interests. The student will be judged on how effective they market themselves.

INSTRUCTIONAL/ENVIRONMENTAL MODIFICATIONS

Students with IEP’s will receive appropriate modifications based on their program.
If necessary, the teacher can assign groups of 2 to keep the journals and conduct the research on the first unit and can skip the first resume. The students can work individually for the rest of the year.
The teacher may need to make other accommodations based on need.
The classroom should have Internet access on at least a 3:1 ratio.

TIME REQUIRED

Planning for this experience requires about one hour to bookmark career sites and become familiar with their workings. Constructing the assessments takes about an hour, as you want to have the resumes evolve over the year. The first time the students complete this experience they will need 2 – 3 one hour class periods to complete the research and resume. As the year progresses, they should be able to complete it in 1 one-hour class period.

RESOURCES

The student should not need any unique resources beyond the Internet and access to a word processor.
The teacher will need well-developed community connections and a flexible field trip budget.

ASSESSMENT PLAN

As the work on the project progresses, the students will receive feedback on their work from their peers and the teacher.
One method that could be used to help students self-assess is as follows: After the group’s project is graded holistically, the group will receive the total possible points to be distributed based on the project’s grade and they will be asked to divide the points based on their participation. The group must agree on the distribution of the grade. Example: a project receives a grade of 90%. There are 3 people in the group. The teacher assigns the group 270 points that they must divide among themselves.
Another method that may be used is to have the class, as a group, develop the rubric used to grade the resume.
Journal writing
Group discussion

STUDENT WORK

REFLECTION

This experience was developed to incorporate more career exploration into high school business classes.