As I reflect on things I have learned these last 4 weeks, I think about how can I take them and bring them into the classroom. I think one easy solution would be to provide students with the same experience I have had. At my high school, we offer work experiences and internships for our students through the Workplace Learning Connection. The work experience is typically a few hours to a full day experience where students can get a taste of different jobs. The students that I've talked with who have participated have really benefited from the experience. It opened their eyes to careers they were interested in and others that they were not interested in. The internship is more of a committment. Students go to the business everyday for an hour or so for 9 weeks. This provides the student more time with the business and more experience in that job. Students have created great connections and gained new skills. I know that Civco hosts students in both programs. Since this program is already going, I think the best way I could support it is to encourage more students to partcipate. I wish that I would have had an experience like this when I was in high school.
Besides sending students out to businesses, I think we should also bring businesses in to students. Our school hosts an annual career day. We bring in about 30 different professions/careers. Students sign up for three 30 minute sessions (each with a different career). During these sessions, the presentor shares a little about his or her job, the type of education they needed, and the skills required for their job. Students are also encouraged to ask questions. I think this is a great way to expose students to careers and get their questions answered from the expert. While I think this is a wonderful event, I need to take it one step further. Why should students only think about future careers one day of the year? I should be encouraging them to think about careers every day! In the past, I have assigned students to research a career of their choice and design a brochure about their career. They had to research education needed, skills needed, recommended high school courses, salary, majors associated with the career and a picture. I think I will revigorate this assignment and allow students to do this again, but create any approved output they want. Once completed, students will be able to browse other students careers.
Another way to bring businesses in to the classroom could be to have a local business of the week. Each class period for the week, I could spend 5 minutes talking about the business, providing problems that someone in the business may need solved, have someone from the business come in and talk, Skype with an employee, or have students research the business. I think this would be a great way for local businesses to be involved in the school, as well as for students to see the connections with school and the outside world. The only problem that I could see with this is that I don't know a lot of local businesses. Also, as a somewhat shy person, I am not sure I would be comfortable approaching a business for this type of support. Perhaps I can work with other teachers (who have taught here longer than I have and have more connections) and we could pilot a program like this together.
I have asked some of my fellow workers at Civco to take a survey about their feelings toward pre-college education and the real world. For any of you reading this, feel free to take the survey as well. I will post the results in my final relflection at the end of the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment