Free Career Exploration Website

During my minute meetings with my students, one of the questions is "do you know what you want to be when you grow up" which gets all types of responses (by the way my favorite response was "mermaid" from a 1st grader).  So I have a cool website to share with you to use as you plan ways to expose your students to different careers.

Career Sighted is a website that shows short 3 minute video clips of real life people and their careers, think the Occupational Outlook Book put into video form.  I love how the videos show and tell what to expect in the job, working conditions, education, etc (covers all the basics). 



This could be used in career cafe groups or in classroom lessons followed by discussion.  Just the exposure of various careers would be quite beneficial to our students and give them several career options to think about.

How do you share various careers to your students? Pin It

Celebrating African American Inventors (free printable)

The month of February is Black History Month where we celebrate the contributions and successes of African-Americans.  This year I thought of a great way to celebrate both black history month while using ASCA's career domain by creating a bulletin board of African-American inventors.

-I created this using Word by typing the invention, inventor and included clip art of the invention (I used Google images for the pictures) .  

-I also created a bulletin board title using Word.  After printing the title, I cut, added construction paper backing for color and laminated.

Title words

What a difference some construction paper can do!

-I printed, added construction paper backing (with a glue stick) and laminated each inventor and posted.  I found some cool border at a teacher speciality store ($2.99).  While at the teacher store, I also found a set of positive quotes from African-Americans ($6.99) to post around the school.

Inventions with construction paper

Border

Positive Quotes

Here's the finished product:

Finished product!

I LOVE this and found out that so many current things we use were invented by African-Americans, which ties into how regardless of who you are and what kind of struggle you may have, anyone can be an inventor or anything that they choose to be.

I want to share this with you so that your school can celebrate these accomplishments during black history or any month.  Click here to download the title letters and click here to download the inventors.  

Enjoy!  

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Career & College Ready Display

I got this idea after seeing a banner from the school counselor blog store.  I created a similar banner from Vistaprint (99 cents on a black Friday sale).  I then made printouts of each college/university in NC (my state) using Word.

For the printouts, I typed each school name (in various fonts and colors) and put an image of the school logo or mascot below the name (use Google images).  I then cut and laminated all of the schools.  I also did something similar with the top 25 best jobs, which I saw under the #schoolcounselor hashtag on Twitter (by the way school counselor is #17).  I added a few more careers that came up often from my minute mtgs with my students (I sorted my spreadsheet of data by career to get more career choices).  I put the colleges and careers all around the banner (in no particular order).

Banner from Vistaprint

Colleges (sorry for the glare from the camera)

Careers (laminated)

Here's the finished product:

I like this display, pretty simple and easy to make but such a meaningful message!

How do you display career and college ready info at your school? Pin It

Career Planning

Yes, you read the title right, career planning can begin at the elementary level.  I highly suggest to parents that they encourage career exploration and allow their child(ren) to search and learn about careers that they may be interested in.
When I ask students "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I hear anything from policeman to grass cutter.  I will admit that my own career plans have changed numerous times from dentist, to marketing exec, to teacher, to school counselor and so may our students (and it's perfectly ok if they do)!  I love the imagination and desire that children have when asked that.

Many students are very passionate about telling me their career choices and feel that they've chosen what will make them most happy.  I tell them that I am a school counselor because it absolutely makes me happy to work at my school and see the wonderful students here (which is 100% true).   I'm glad that I had the opportunity to explore my various career interests and learn truly what was the best fit for me!  Some resources that may be helpful in your student's career exploration search are:

-My Next Move
-Occupational Outlook Network
-Paws in Jobland
-Career Information for Kids, Bureau of Labor Statistics
-Career Exploration Guides and Resources for Younger Students
-Career Games
-Careers in Science & Technology
-Kids Work!
-Your Child's Career
-Career Aisle Pin It