Middle and High School Career Explorations Reading Activity
As our children start exploring various careers, you and your child can research together various career exploration websites by googling questions about specific careers. Included below are two educational articles that discuss the importance of having children consider and explore careers during their middle and high school years:
- https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-03-15-how-middle-school-obsessions-can-shape-career-paths
- http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/jun11/vol68/num09/Thinking-About-Careers-in-Middle-School.aspx#.WxIeZFjMQ0c.email
Career Discussion Questions
After reading the two website linked articles or two other relevant articles, discuss the following 
questions with your child when considering the information presented in the two different articles:
- Think back about your favorite hobbies or passions in your elementary or middle school years. Share with your child any skills or career choices that you explored at that time and is relevant to what you are doing today. (e.g. I loved to make books and now I am an educator and author.)
- What are your child’s passions? What can your child do to explore careers using these passions?
- What middle or high school electives can your child take to expand a career exploration. (For example, a high school student wanted to learn more about being an architect. She attended a summer college camp for seniors at a premier university. During the three-week camp, she learned that she was artistic and creative, but would not be happy working alone for long hours designing homes, etc. This was an important discovery because she was planning on applying to an out-of-state accredited university which would have been very costly.)
- Has your school provided any career exploration counseling, job fairs, or career planning courses? If no, what can you do to help your child further explore career interests in your community?
- How can you support your child in pursuing his interests and dreams?
- What financial guidance or information do you need to support your child’s career education
- What else do you and your child need to learn about a specific career to map out a plan for a higher education degree or career training program? Write a reflection in the comments section for this blog.
Relevant Common Core Standards
Listed below are relevant California Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy that support middle and high school learners:
- Grade 7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Analyze how two or more authors’ writing about the same topic shape their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence or advancing different interpretations of facts.
- Grades 11-12 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g. visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.
Copyright © 2018 by GenParenting
Yvette King-Berg, is the Executive Director of Youth Policy Institute’s Charter Schools. She was the former California Charter Schools Association Vice-President of School Development and Outreach-Southern California. Ms. King-Berg has over thirty years of experience working with teachers, students, parents, and organizations in a variety of positions including Director, Assistant Director, Curriculum Advisor, Bilingual, and Title 1 Coordinators, classroom teacher (K-12) in Pasadena and LAUSD. She has been married for twenty-three years, and is the proud mother of her son, EJ, who attends UC Berkeley.