Katie Kangaroo & Her Awesome Career Adventure

We have begun teaching the 16 national career clusters in all our elementary schools. Katie Kangaroo is an interactive career adventure that can be displayed on the Smart Board to introduce students to a job in each of the 16 career clusters in a fun an engaging way. I plan to use it with my first graders when we return from spring break. A word of caution, initially only 10 clusters appear and you have to go to all 10 before the last 6 open. I found that out by contacting the publisher  https://www.youthlight.com Katie's adventure is structured by her asking each worker 4 basic questions. The program includes 14 follow-up activities to further enhance learning about careers. 

16 Career Clusters

College/Career Readiness #NSCW17

ASCA wanted school counselors to promote college and career readiness today, the last day of National School Counseling Week. I don't ask my students what they want to be when they grow up (today's sign) because many will do jobs that do not currently exist. We promote the exploration of the 16 career clusters and talk about all postsecondary options. Staff and students are encouraged to wear college gear the first Friday of each month that students are in school. Staff is proud to show off their favorite college(s). I am in the picture with our library staff and their beautiful bulletin board!

The Heart of the Matter Video

DATA Reports

I like the format of the one-page DATA Report from Making DATA Work. I do these reports for each of my 3 program goals. This is my career goal to increase familiarity with the STEM Career Cluster. I share these reports with my administration, Advisory Council, central office supervisor, and others on my school web page.

Career Month - Spread it out to save counselor sanity

As I mentioned in a post at the beginning of the month we are focusing on April is STEMazing. It was my goal for every student in the school to have the opportunity to listen and ask questions of a worker in a STEM occupation. Learning about a career from someone who actually does the job is a very valuable activity. These career visitors in kindergarten through grade 2 are arranged by the teachers. The presenters speak to one class at a time and most only talked to one class but a few were generous and did two. I let the upper grades decide what would work best for their schedule with the understanding they would need to stay in the rooms to monitor behavior. My third grade team chose the Career Cafe format which we have used for several years. There are 4 teachers on the team and an extra class near (which I could monitor) by so I got 5 volunteers and students had a choice of who to hear during lunch. In grade 4 we have 3 classes and an extra room so students picked one of the four but they chose to do it the last 30 minutes of a day. In grade 5 we have only 3 classes so they chose an hour one Friday morning and had students attend all 3 and the students moved every 20 minutes. I asked the teams to spread it out so I had one of theses event a week in April to coordinate which did not have a major impact on the other components of the counseling program. I gave pre-post surveys to all teachers which they had students complete the last week of March and have begun the post-surveys this week. I taught all students a lesson on careers this month with a focus on the STEM cluster. This is our beautiful STEM Bulletin Board created by my fantastic volunteer. I still need to add some pictures of our career visitors. It serves as a reminder about STEM occupations and a thank you to our volunteers. I totally send the message to my staff that career development is a joint responsibility of counselors and teachers just like character education. I will ask teachers and the Advisory Council for feedback if they liked the career visitors concentrated in one month (my preference) or if we should go back to spreading it out next year. 

STEM Resources for Parents

We had a great speaker for parents last night from a local after school STEM program that offers programs to kids 4-14 to encourage STEM skills and careers, called Rosie Riveters. Research shows after school programs are a great way to encourage children in the STEM field but some of our girls don't want to do them because they already have a stereotype that this area is for boys! The organizataion chose the iconic logo because when kids say "I can;t" they respond "Why not?" They want kids to experience failure in a safe setting so they have tools later in life. The speaker shared that their groups with ages 4-7 and 8-10 are easy and lighthearted but the group of 11-14 girls was hard to engage. The older girls avoid engagement and showed lots less confidence. Other resources parents can use at home are https://talkingmathwithkids.com/  https://babbledabbledo.com/ http://www.science-sparks.com/ These sites give parents suggestions for how to make math, science, and engineering fun for kids at home. Another resource is this article offers great suggestions for science toys (geared to girls) http://www.amightygirl.com/b 

College and Career Month April is STEMazing

Our school is focusing on college and career exploration this month. We kicked it off today with our monthly college wear day. Throughout the month we will have career speakers come to classes and two grade levels will have special "career days" so students can choose what speaker they want to hear. I am fortunate that my teachers cooperate with the counseling program and understand they have a role in career awareness too. Based on our data, we decided to focus on the STEM Career Cluster and STEM skills this year. Our girls do not score as high as the boys in the upper grades in math and science and many voice a negative attitude about themselves as math learners. We have been able to get STEM speakers but the challenge has been finding females to serve as role models. Our program uses the 6 components of college and career counseling developed by the National Office for School Counselor Advocacy https://8_Components_WEB_111107.pdf

What Shoes Will You Wear?

Julia Cook's book What Shoes Will You Wear? is very popular with my third graders. As the hook I ask, "How is what you wear and a job connected?" It is easy for students to point out shoes and uniforms are required for some occupations. The essential questions for this lesson are: Who am I? Where am I headed? How do I get there? During the lesson I review the 6 career paths. For more information about career paths missouricareereducation.org At the end of the lesson the students each draw a picture titled "What shoes will I wear in the future?" and label the occupation and match it to a career path.

November is National Career Development Month

November is a good month to look at your Core Curriculum Action Plan to determine if your program has the needed lessons and activities to make all your students college and career ready. At the elementary school we need to make students aware of all the career paths and help them connect what they are learning today to their future tomorrow.  Parents often need help understanding why we even address careers in elementary school.  If you want to "celebrate" National Career Development Month go the the NCDA website ncda.org/aws/NCDA/ncdmonth

Girls and STEM

My school data profile shows that our female students scored significantly lower than males in grades 3 and 5 in math and science on our state standardized tests. This has been the trend the past two years in grade 3. My SMART goal this year will address this gap. Here is a resource you may want to check out if your school has a similar gap http://www.vsgc.gfb.pdf

College & Career Month

I am planning to condense some of my Career Cafe, career visitors, and lessons into a College & Career Month this year. I found this video youtube.com that has some great ideas. I have contacted my administrators and other key staff to try to get buy in and pick a month with not too much else going on. I'd like it to be March to tie in with March Madness but our school has been trying to spread out schoolwide activities so I will need to be flexible. I'd love to get comments with any good suggestions...

Career Cafe

We have been doing Career Cafe in our upper grades the past few years. It is a very easy to run component of our comprehensive counseling program.  Today was our first session for the year. A parent of a fifth grader came to share his part-time job as an umpire (currently a girls high school softball umpire and summer tournaments on weekends).  He explained to the students who signed up to attend this particular session that even though he has been umpiring for over 30 years he has to take a test (now online) twice a year to keep up his certifications. He started at age 14 and told the kids about umpiring as a job since 8th grade. He brought all his gear including his 4 rule books and case study book for unusual circumstances. He used to be the head umpire for the whole area and train young umpires. It was a great example how someone who grew up loving sports could stay involved while he does another job which really supports his family (software development). Students learn so much from actually meeting and interacting with people who are passionate about their careers.

Career Cafe iHelp

My co-counselor made this for our Back-to-School Night display to help with our recruiting for speakers in grades 3-5.  We are trying to use the iHelp theme to brand the counseling program.

The Career Song - Buckalope Elementary

I am planning to incorporate more visuals and music into my class lessons this year. I think the kindergarten students would find this one fun and educational.

Serving Up Careers

This oversize bulletin board is a work in progress.  We actually ran out of plates that frame each of the parents/community members that have come to school this year to share their occupation with students.  Out Career Cafes in grades 3-5 were very popular and our students in grades K-2 have visitors come to their individual classrooms.  The counselors took a picture at each Career Cafe and teachers take pictures in K-2 and send them to the counselors. Each plate have the visitors name and occupation.  Students stop by to look at the additions. I have even seen spouses taking pictures of the bulletin board and sending it to their partner at work.  We are so appreciative of people volunteering to talk to our children about the world of work!

Career Video Resource

One thing we are going to share in our Career presentation this week at VSCA is the drkit.org video series arranged by career clusters.  These would be a great back up if a career role model had to cancel at the last minute. I know about 10% of my boys would love to view the professional football player video.

Serving Up an Enticing Menu of Careers Can Be as Easy as Boling Water

I am putting the final touches on the presentation my co-counselor and I will be doing at the VSCA Conference this week.  I am always appreciative of the hard work of our leaders in offering this annual professional development opportunity for over 500 counselors.  We wanted to share the career development portion of our program because we are able to involve most of our teachers in this effort as well as over 50 volunteer career role models who come to talk to our kids about their occupations.  We do primarily class visits in K-2 organized by teachers and Career Cafe in grades 3-5 organized by the counselors. We also teach 2-3 lessons at every grade level on careers.

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National Career Development Month

The career development component of the school counseling program needs to be highly visible in the school.  This is my bulletin board for this month to emphasize exploring a variety of careers at the elementary level.  The top half of the board is a collage of a wide variety of careers. We do career development activities all year round, not just during career development month.  The counselors "teach" at least 2 formal lessons on careers (we teach 10 total) but we also have career visitors in all our kindergarten through second grades (at least 6 a year).  The classroom teachers use parent volunteers to talk about their careers (they take the place of a parent reader slot in grades 1 and 2).  In grades 3-5 we do about 3 career cafes a month.  The volunteers are scheduled using Sign Up Genius.