Happy New Year and warm welcome to this inaugural posting on the CTE Guidance and Career Development Blog! I am excited to hear from Guidance and CTE professionals about how we support students and help them make the connection between education and the world of work. It's obvious to us as adults, but how do we bridge that gap for students?
For this blog posting, I nabbed a counselor from Colorado Springs School District 11(my district) and I asked him a few questions about how he collaborates with educators in his high school to speak a common language about Postsecondary Workforce Readiness (PoWeR) Skills, which can be found here.
Scott Crosby from Doherty collaborates within his building to teach students to “understand the relevance of learning to postsecondary and workforce readiness.”
Scott said “students might not know education is relevant because they’re sixteen, but I tell them it is. Learning isn’t just about likes and dislikes it’s about building a broad base of knowledge about making you a better citizen overall.” He also teaches PWR skills when he goes into the classroom to develop students’ ICAPs.
During individual planning, Scott teaches students about the relationship between service learning and future planning.
He tells students, “You want to demonstrate that you give of yourself for no other reason than because it’s for somebody else. Volunteer work looks good because it shows you have compassion and that you’re able to be culturally relevant.” Developmentally, students at the high school level have a hard time seeing beyond themselves, their friends and their school.
"If you want to be in the medical field and you volunteer, you see things from the real part of the industry. You get to know what it’s like to walk by a hospital room and see patients, you experience the real environment,” said Scott.
What’s great about our state’s adoption of Arne Duncan’s 21st Century Skills is that it encourages collaboration with other educators and gives counselors an opportunity to teach kids relevance like Scott does. There’s an obvious connection between the Postsecondary Workforce Readiness (PoWeR) skills and the American School Counselor Association Standards. The state mandates that districts receive professional development to integrate PWR skills into the classroom. What an awesome opportunity to collaborate and support our schools, CTE, and the community. Teaching students the how and why of being responsible for their learning: this is just one of the PWR skills that reflect our area of expertise as school counselors. Woot!
