Career exploration is a key building block for our student’s futures. We want them to discover their talents, interests, and paths that will work for them. A great way to begin the process of career exploration is to get your community engaged in the process!

“The future belongs to the curious. The ones who are not afraid to try it, explore it, poke at it, question it, and turn it inside out.”

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Many students don’t have opportunities to explore careers outside of what they see their parents doing or those closest to them in the community. As educators, we have a golden opportunity to open the door for them to explore careers they have never even heard of.

Speakers

One way to engage with the community is to bring speakers into your school. This is an opportunity for your students to explore careers they have never heard of. Members of the community can get involved and give back. Many businesses will jump on the opportunity to get involved with the school. They are eager to volunteer but don’t always know where to begin.

Career Café

A career café is a panel of speakers who speak with students. Ideally, you will want to bring in 3-4 speakers to share what they do for a living. We have found career cafés to be most successful when you have an audience of 1-2 classes.

The opportunities are endless for career cafés. You can host a career café that illustrates what students can do after high school. This is a great café for middle school students. For this, bring in a military recruiter, a representative from a technical school or apprenticeship program, and a college representative.

Themed Career Cafés are great for older students. For example, you could have a Career Café that focuses on Healthcare. Invite 3-4 people that work in healthcare to share about their jobs. You could also do a spotlight on Criminal Justice where you invite an attorney, probation officer, and different law enforcement agencies.

Career Day

Similar to a Career Café, you could host a career day. Turn your classrooms into locations for speakers. You will need many speakers. Assign each speaker to a room.

Career Days require a bit more planning than Career Cafés. Once you have your list of volunteers and careers, you will have your students pick their preferences. Looking at student preferences, you will schedule students into each room.

Instead of going to regular classes, students will go to a classroom that has the speaker that you have assigned to them. You can allow students to pick their rooms/speakers on their own, but we have found that this frequently turns into chaos. The day runs much smoother if you take the time to schedule where each student will go. Teachers should remain in their classrooms to help supervise students and assist speakers as needed.

Career Lunch and Learns

Lunch and Learns are a great opportunity for High School students to get more information about careers they are interested in. Plan for speakers to come in throughout the year during lunch. Set up a designated space where students can bring their lunch and listen to the speaker present about their career fields.

Career exploration is not the only topic that can be beneficial as a lunch and learn. Consider inviting speakers to discuss college applications, scholarships, the military, and technical schools. Free food and giveaways are great ways to entice more students to join your lunch and learn opportunities.

Community Participation

You might be thinking that these are all great ideas, but how are you going to get speakers to come into your school? That is an excellent question!

Many colleges and military recruiters are more than happy to come to speak at your school. They want to recruit your students! Work with your public relations specialist for your district and reach out to your educational foundation. These two resources usually have a lot of connections in the community. They can help you reach out to local businesses to recruit speakers.

Your parents are also a vast resource! Send out information in your school newsletter asking for volunteers. The PTO is also a great resource to reach parents.

Career Fair

A Career Fair is an excellent opportunity to get students and families engaged! You have options depending on your age group. High School Career Fairs are typically geared toward students obtaining internships or employment. If you are looking for an opportunity for younger students, consider calling it a Career Exposure Fair. For even younger students, you can look at hosting a Touch a Truck event.

Career Fairs are easily held after school and can be a great opportunity to get families involved. As this event is held after school, you will want to recruit many volunteers. Obviously, you will need to recruit your career representatives. Don’t forget to recruit volunteers to help you set up the event, supervise, assist families, assist career representatives, and clean up.

Volunteers can be recruited from your High School National Honor Society, Student Council, or any other organization that requires volunteer hours. Students do an excellent job helping you set up, clean up, and welcome guests. Don’t forget to contact your staff and PTO for other adult volunteers.

Career Exposure Fair

Career Exposure Fairs are great for students in 4th-9th grades. We strongly encourage you to set up your careers as career clusters. For example, divide your gym into six areas. Each area should represent a career cluster. Some clusters you might choose from could be STEM, Public Safety, Healthcare, Construction, Nature/Agriculture, or Business and Finance. Invite 1-3 representatives for each career cluster. The more interactive they can make their area, the better!

As students and families come in for the Career Exposure Fair, have them fill out a Career Cluster Finder. Students can look at the results of their Career Cluster Finder to determine which areas they want to visit first.

Another way to engage younger students is by creating Career Passports. Students take a Career Passport around the Fair to get a stamp at every cluster they visit. Students can either keep their passports or turn them in at the end for a prize or a drawing for a prize.

To get more participation, plan your fair on a night when parents are already coming to school. Perhaps you host it before a football game or your school’s Band Concert and Art Show. Another way to entice families is to feed them. If you can get your local businesses to sponsor dinner for your families, you will get more families to attend.

Touch a Truck

Touch a Truck is an opportunity for younger students to start career exploration. This event is frequently held in your school parking lot. You will want to invite volunteers around your community that can showcase their work outside.

Some careers to consider inviting would be the Fire Department, Law Enforcement, Military, Construction Companies, Farmers, and Animal Control. Young students can explore the large equipment used in these careers to spark their interests.

Job Shadow

Job shadowing is a way for students to witness a job they think they might want to do. How often do people go to College just to realize a year in they actually hate what they majored in? Job shadowing is a great reality check for students.

A teacher work day is a great day to sponsor a special job shadow day. Students are already working from home or doing e-learning, so it will be easier for them to make up missed classwork.

Scheduling a specific job shadowing day is a great opportunity to get the community involved. Reach out to local businesses and ask if they would be willing for students to shadow for the day or half a day. Businesses frequently want to recruit and often look for ways to give back.

Provide incentives for students that participate. Provide lunch at school afterward to debrief. Students participating can be entered into a drawing for a small scholarship or gift card.

Follow-up is also key. Design a way for students to think about what they did for the day. This could be as simple as a Google Form that they fill out describing their experience. You could go deeper by holding debrief meetings or lunches. Teachers could also hand out extra credit or make it a class assignment.

Head over to our Mind Trek Programs to get more ideas and Career Exploration resources.

SEL Unfiltered

Do you want to hear more? Check out the rest of our series on Career Readiness on our SEL Unfiltered podcast, wherever you stream your podcasts.

Check out other episodes in our Career Readiness series, including Why Career Readiness?, Virtual Career Exploration, Landing the Job, and Employability Skills – Communication.

Game of the Week

Every week on SEL Unfiltered, we like to bring you a game or activity. You can use the game with your students, in the classroom, or in a small group. This week Kaitlin and I did Two for Tuesday.

Two for Tuesday is a great way to get to know your students, practice communication skills, and build relationships. The premise is simple. Students share two items that are specific to the topic of the day. Today’s topic was, “Name two people that inspired you from history.”

We love our Take 5 activities here at SEL Unfiltered, and this is no exception. You can do Two for Tuesday as a journal prompt, as a discussion topic in a small group, or for the entire class.

The questions are easy to adapt to fit your audience and needs. For example, name two of your favorite foods, name two of your favorite songs, name two emotions, name things you learned this week, name two new people you met this year, or name two goals you want to work on.