Careers & Life-Planning

CLICK to access Career Choices @ Prospect Education Center

 

A focus on career and life-planning has been part of the culture at Prospect Education Center for at least 20 years. We've sought GOOD...BETTER...BEST for our students!

GOOD--As we've encountered new ideas, concepts and programs, we've found ways to incorporate them. From 1983 through 2013, students have taken a career interest inventory, then developed possibilities with research and career speakers. We've taken field trips to schools and educational sites, sent teams to the Tulare County Tech Prep Expo and have helped students gain work experience while enrolled high school. PUSD Pathways have been available to our students, too.

BETTER--can we make it better! February 2009, Jim Tyler and Steve Reynolds attended a vocational education conference in Anaheim, CA and came back with thoughts about how to improve offerings @ PEC. July 2013--Steve has just returned from the "Focus on Freshman Institute" sponsored by Academic Innovations. An instructional program called "Career" Choices" helps students learn about themselves and their areas of talent/giftedness, discover how they might use these gifts and talent in life, how they can hone their skill through education and experience and create a management tool to help them process this--from at least middle school through the journey of life: http://my10yearplan.com. Might we use this @ PEC? Take a look: http://www.whatworkscareerchoices.com/swi.html * November 2013--we have materials and are planning how to offer it to our students. January 2014--we began teaching the course. September-May 2014-2015 we taught the course for the second time.


BETTER--Additional learning and growing might include year-specific experiences, dual-enrollment courses, job shadowing, internships, work experience and experience at home and abroad--

 

--Year-specific experiences: 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th

--Dual-enrollment/Get Focused & Stay Focused: 

http://getfocusedstayfocused.org/

--STEM:

http://www.edutopia.org/stw-college-career-stem

--Job Shadowing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_Shadow

--Internship:

http://www.edutopia.org/stw-college-career-stem-video

--Work experience:

http://www.edutopia.org/workplace-learning-experience-student-engagement

--On their own: http://www.edutopia.org/is-school-enough-informal-learning-resources

--Overseas/abroad: http://www.csiet.org/about/who-we-are.html

--Trip/interview: http://roadtripnation.com

 

BEST--We will keep working, learning and updating/revising to be the BEST we can BE! Here's a link to what we're doing with Career Choices/Focus on Freshman and potential dual enrollment with KCCD.