Career Exploration Mini-Course

Introduction

It is a common problem for students to not know what they want to do in their future. A student leaves high school with no real idea of where they want to go or what they want to do which causes alot of wasted time and money. In completing this mini-course students may not know exactly what they want to do in the future but what things effect their choices. We live in a time that is in constant change and that includes the career field, we as teachers are training students for jobs that do not yet exist, we need to prepare them for anything. This course will allow them to explore all of the things that may be a possibility for them in the future. It is important to know that all students will be coming to class with different backgrounds in the field of careers. They may have worked already themselves or their parents may keep them very informed on what they do for a job and what it may entail. We will be using online resources along with written sources we will bring this all together to create a final project.

Objectives

Upon completion of this course learners will have a better understanding of the following:

• Explain how interesets, aptitudes, and skills influence career choices

• Give strategies for applying and interviewing for a job

• List education possibilities for getting a job

Prerequisites

This course is created to inform students how to find a career that may best suit them in their future. We will be using the interent and laptops to complete the lesson.

• General understanding of Microsoft Publisher
• General understanding of laptop functions
• Basic writing abilities
• Willingness to learn

Unit 1: What is and how to get a career

In this unit students will learn what the difference is between a career and a job. They will also learn the possible avenues they may need to take to get into a career they may be interested in. The students will also fill out practice applications. These will be sorted through and students that have done well will be interviewed in front of the class.

Unit 2: Educational Background

Now that students have an understanding of how to choose a career and what a career is they now need to understand how to get to that career. What are the steps they need to take to have this career that are willing to work for? After completing the online questionare they were to choose one career of interest and print out the information on that career. Now is the time to have them look very clsely at that information to find what education they may need for that specific career.

Unit 3: Career Profile

This unit will really get the student thinking about the things they really like to do. They will be looking at many different and sometimes unique activities and decide whether or not they may like to do them. I have found that it is very easy for a student to tell you all the things that they do not like to do, though do they really know what they enjoy doing. In the end we all hope to find a career that we enjoy that we do not dread doing every day for many years to come. This unit is created to help students think about all those things.

Unit 4: Career Research

This lesson chould take many days to finish in class. You may want to give the student some class time and some home time to finish the last step of the Career Exploration process. In this final step students are going to explore the many aspects of one career that they have been linked with. They are then going to create a culminating project.

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