Shasta 21st Century Career Connections

Students tin encounter some potential careers in the financial manufacture, and how to obtain them, in this career ladders chart.

Shasta 21st Century Career Connections

Students tin see some potential careers in the fiscal industry, and how to obtain them, in this career ladders chart.

San Diego loftier school student Sharon Tamir is spending four weeks of her junior twelvemonth in Vancouver, Canada, interning at an historic school for girls and delving into the teaching practices surrounding project-based learning.

Her classmate Dayyan Sisson is spending his internship month at Birch Aquarium at UC San Diego's Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Dayyan will intern equally a biotechnology researcher, studying the prehensile tails of seahorses, sea dragons and pipefish to observe lessons that can exist derived from the creatures' natural biological science and practical to technological advances in the human sphere. Think advances to fine-tune robotic tentacles used by underwater ocean rovers or improve the blueprint of stents, the thin tubes used in medical procedures.

Not too shabby for a couple of loftier school juniors who haven't quite withal settled on which higher they'd like to attend.

Sharon, sixteen, and Dayyan, 17, are examples of the ability of strong career evolution programs in schools – an attribute many say is too oftentimes missing from campuses or is hampered past a lack of counselors.

High Tech High junior Sharon Tamir

Courtesy High Tech High

High Tech High inferior Sharon Tamir

But a growing country and national focus on preparing students for college and careers is fueling a refocus on career preparation and shining a spotlight on efforts to foster early career awareness among students. Preparing students for college and careers is a priority of California'due south funding formula for schools, the Local Control Funding Formula, and is also a main goal of the Common Core Land Standards, adopted by California and 42 other states.

"Fifteen to 20 years ago, we had this huge emphasis on career development and really doing a systematic career development program starting in elementary school," said Lynn Linde, coordinator of clinical experiences in the school counseling program at Loyola University Maryland and old president of the American Counseling Clan. "… That sort of fell out of favor. I'g guessing a lot of that had to do with loftier-stakes testing. It became very difficult to put anything into a school twenty-four hours that was not role of the accountability program."

"At present we're back to doing this again," Linde said.

Sharon and Dayyan attend High Tech Loftier School in San Diego, a charter high school founded in 2000 that has since grown into a network of thirteen schools serving 5,000 students from kindergarten through 12th form. Introduction to careers is one of the tenets of High Tech High, which was launched by a coalition of business organisation leaders and educators.

Both teens were introduced to career evolution programs kickoff in middle school in the charter network, when Sharon said students were encouraged to starting time exploring their interests for a class project. "Teachers would say, 'You better figure out what you lot are interested in, because you're going to do a larger project on it,'" she said.

The career introduction intensified in high school. Every bit sophomores, all High Tech Loftier students participate in Inspire Week, where students break into groups of about twenty and explore jobs that interest them and hear presentations from guest speakers. The capstone of the week is a 2-day job-shadowing visit that allows students to see careers in activeness.

As juniors, all students are required to complete a four-week internship to give them a crash course in the work world.

High Tech High junior Dayyan Sisson

Courtesy Loftier Tech High

High Tech High junior Dayyan Sisson

"It's peachy to have the opportunity," said Sharon, whose internship will take her to York Business firm School in Vancouver, a prep school for girls founded in 1932. Through her studies at High Tech High, Sharon has discovered a passion for project-based learning – not necessarily teaching information technology, but understanding the ideology and practices behind it. The Canadian schoolhouse is considering implementing more project-based learning in its classrooms, said Sharon said she will piece of work with teachers and administrators to provide insights from a student perspective on how to implement the more easily-on and collaborative learning style.

The internship will help broaden her understanding of the topic, Sharon said, merely also give her invaluable practical feel.

"Information technology's practiced that nosotros have it, regardless of who you are or where you lot're going," she said. "Yous're going to be exposed to a career, you're going to be more prepared than someone who didn't have anything."

Helping students identify where their passions prevarication is central to helping set up them for future jobs and correlates to success in school, Linde said. Research has shown that students feel more engaged in school when they are able to see the connectedness between their studies and real-world applications, such every bit how what they're learning in the classroom will benefit them after graduation. Connecting students to existent-world experiences is a driving force behind career pathway programs that operate in California loftier schools. The programs, frequently referred to as linked learning, combine academics with work feel, and help keep students engaged in their studies.

And with pressure on colleges and universities to reduce the time information technology takes students to earn their degrees – too as ascent tuition costs – career development becomes a higher priority.

"When we appoint kids in thinking about opportunity, it builds a sense of hope and optimism virtually their future," said Sue Sawyer, executive director of the Shasta 21st Century Career Connections, which works to promote career readiness in Shasta Canton schools. "If they have a career goal in mind when they are moving from loftier school to college, it gives them a reason for why they are continuing their teaching."

Students can see the variety of careers associated with the heavy equipment industry in this career ladder document created by Shasta 21st Century Career Connections.

Shasta 21st Century Career Connections

Students tin see the multifariousness of careers associated with the heavy equipment industry in this career ladder chart. (Click to enlarge)

To assist students discover their interests, Sawyer'south group uses a career personality cess based on the RIASEC Inventory, a pop questionnaire that links personality types to compatible vocational fields. Based on the results, counselors and educators can begin talking to students about potential careers that match their interests. To help students further, the group has created a series of "career ladders" charts that are color-coded to results on the RIASEC Inventory. The resulting easy-to-read diagrams map out potential careers associated with different interest areas and personality types and outline the educational path students will need to follow to pursue that career.

"Kids will use the terminology they associate with something," Sawyer said. "Y'all'll hear students say they want to be a veterinarian, merely sometimes what they really mean is that they desire to work with animals. It helps them explore other possibilities that are related to what they've identified equally an interest."

Career inventories tin can be an effective tool to help students get-go thinking about their futures, Linde said. A variety of programs are offered online.

The California Department of Education offers a number of career exploration resource through its California Career Resource Network, including the California CareerZone, where students tin can take a personality assessment and explore jobs and pay levels, and create an estimated household upkeep.

The recently launched MyVerse website uses a psychometric color test to match students with potential careers based on their color preferences, then shows them videos of workers in that industry, and matches them with potential majors and colleges that offer that major. Site visitors can click through a serial of five screens, selecting their "nigh" favorite and "least" favorite colors from the choices listed. Color tests are based on the work of Swiss psychotherapist Max Lüscher, who believed that personality traits can be linked to ane's favorite color.

High Tech Loftier uses a programme chosen Naviance to assist students map out career options and higher choices. The programme offers personality assessments, allows students to fill out a career involvement profile and helps them build resumes. Students can besides research colleges that offer majors in their fields of interest.

The programs work best when paired with follow-up from counselors or other educators, Linde said.

"That'due south one of the greatest resources I've had – being able to talk to someone at schoolhouse giving me career advice," said Dayyan, the High Tech High junior who credits Manager of College Advising Chris White with providing feedback and direction. "He was able to guide me."

Dayyan said he always had a potent interest in engineering and arrived at the campus thinking he would pursue that career field. Later joining the robotics squad and finding it not to his liking, he started pursuing another interest, possibly post-obit his male parent's footsteps in the film manufacture.

But a particularly inspiring biological science course helped lure him back to engineering, especially when he discovered he could meld the ii fields. The San Diego teen is now because a career in the biomedical field or biomimicry, which studies the natural world to inspire solutions to mutual problems or spur technological improvements – like he'll be doing with the seahorses at Birch over the next few weeks.

"I'm really using this internship feel to better empathise what I desire to practice with the rest of my life," Dayyan said.

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