Apr 05 2022

College and Career Explorations

When children are preschoolers, they love to think about what they want to be when they grow up. Some want to be garbage collectors, doctors, princesses, and athletes. Whatever career passions children relish, it is important to reinforce these interests with relevant play activities and enrichment outings to learn more about various careers. Parents can help children visualize a plan for a career opportunity by encouraging their children to:

Communicate with folks in specific professions.
Research the educational and job requirements for potential careers.
Participate in field trips and community activities to learn more about specific careers.
Attend parents’ work activities and shadow parents, colleagues, and friends to explore various careers
Encourage children to help at work with duplications, mailings, and computer inputting if permitted by the company.
Secure community service volunteer responsibilities, internships, and paid jobs.

As children enter middle school and explore various careers, they must learn how to research various college and career academic requirements to ensure that they are taking the proper courses for a specific career. They can attend career exploration days, meet with college counselors, and attend college tours to learn more about academic preparations. The more children understand the requirements for specific careers, the greater their successes will be to prepare and plan for appropriate course selections.

Early College Options

Early college, or the ability to take college courses in high school, can save thousands of dollars in educational preparations and tuition costs later. Middle school and high school students can learn more about early college by contacting their local school district to determine which high school campuses offer community college courses at the high school site. Parents and students can also contact their local community college to learn which courses high school students can register for during and after the school day. Additionally, many state and private colleges offer summer and vacation break intra-sessions on different careers including computer coding, science and math academics, performing arts, and writing workshops.

Community Service Leadership Opportunities

As part of their high school graduation requirements, most high school students are required to participate in community service activities. Some students use this time to explore careers and provide community services at elementary schools, for youth sports teams, and at various social service agencies. During summer breaks, students may participate in an international business program or cultural exchange program in another country. Other students work at summer jobs or internships to learn about merchandising, computer coding, and legislative support services for a local legislator.

Much success supporting your children’s school leadership and career planning options.

Mary Ann Burke, Digital Education Expert

Mary Ann Burke, Ed.D., Digital Education Expert, is a substitute distance learning teacher for Oak Grove School District in San Jose, California and the author of STUDENT-ENGAGED ASSESSMENT: Strategies to Empower All Learners (Rowman & Littlefield: 2020). Dr. Burke creates digital language arts and substitute teaching K – 12 activities for teachers and parents. She is the Cofounder of the Genparenting.com blog. Burke is the former Director II of Categorical & Special Projects for the Santa Clara County Office of Education that supports 31 school districts serving 272,321 students in Santa Clara County. She is also a previous Director – State & Federal Compliance for Oakland Unified School District, the former Director – Grantwriter for the Compton Unified School District, and was the initial VISTA Director for the Community Partnership Coalition in southern California. Much of her work focuses on creating innovative digital trainings and partnership programs for teachers and families to support students’ learning. These programs were featured as a best practice at a National Title I Conference, California’s Title I Conferences, AERA Conferences, an ASCD Conference, the NASSP Conference, and statewide educator conferences.

Feb 08 2022

Consider Children’s Needs for School Choice

Consider Your Children’s Needs for School Choice

When considering different school options, you can ask yourself the following questions about your child or collectively about your children:

What is my child’s personality type?
Does she prefer playing or socializing in small groups, large groups, or by herself?
Does she like to lead a group in various activities?
Would she prefer to watch others and then follow in small group play and socialization activities?
Is she easily frustrated when playing and socializing with others?
Does she get angry when things do not go her way?
What are her favorite activities?
Does she prefer outside or thinking types of activities?
Does she prefer paper and pencil activities or large muscle and interactive activities?
Would she learn best by reading with you, listening, or watching others?
What are her academic experiences?
Does she recognize letters and letter combination sounds?
Has she exhibited other pre-reading or reading skills?
How does she apply number sense in everyday activities?
What has the teacher said about her social, emotional, and learning skill development?
What concerns do you have about her academic success and learning challenges?

[Read more…]

Mary Ann Burke, Digital Education Expert

Dec 07 2021

What Does an Engaged Classroom Look Like?

This post is sixth of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

How to Create Learning Goals from Academic Standards

In the classroom, clear and actionable goals are a good start to supporting student learning. Students can then deconstruct standards and big picture goals into their own individual learning aims and intentions. The level of challenge must be feasible for the students. If the goals are too easy, students will get bored and complete their assignment quickly. If the goals are too hard, students become discouraged leading to low-quality outcomes, or none at all. [Read more…]

Mary Ann Burke, Digital Education Expert

Nov 30 2021

How Parents Can Support Student Learning

This blog is a parallel commentary from the parent perspective on Mary Ann Burke’s November 2, 2021 post “What teachers and parents can do to increase student learning” from her series Student Engagement Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners.

Most second-generation Asian Americans were prodded by parents to achieve the “American Dream” by becoming a doctor, engineer, or lawyer, my parents gave me the freedom of choice. My Asian American idea of achieving the “American Dream” was not so much defined by a career, but that a successful life was one in which I had every opportunity to fulfill my destiny. When I was young, my parents encouraged me to pursue my passions, to develop my talents, and to follow the sense of calling in my life. During this season of Thanksgiving, I am eternally grateful for the gift of freedom my parents have bestowed on me. [Read more…]

Jaime Koo, Encouraging Literacy

Discovering the joy of teaching while in high school, Jaime pursued her B.A. in English at Santa Clara University. She also received a teaching credential and a M.A. in Education Administration from Santa Clara University. Jaime taught English Language Arts at Rancho Middle School, motivating and inspiring young people to become effective communicators and contributors in their community. From being a Middle School English Language Arts/English Language Development teacher to becoming a stay-at home mom, Jaime is an education consultant who presents literacy workshops. Her workshops focus on a combination of her ten years of teaching expertise with tried-and-true experiences that she uses with her own children. Jaime is also a Teacher Consultant with the San Jose Area Writing Project. Jaime’s mission is to share effective reading and writing strategies with families to encourage literacy.

Jul 27 2021

Career Explorations for Our Children

Throughout life, children aspire to become many different things when they grow up. One child may want to become a sanitation worker and recycle truck driver. Others dream of becoming a fireman, police woman, or teacher. From an early age, we can encourage our children to learn more about different types of careers and jobs by:

Taking our children to our jobs afterschool, in the evening, or on weekends
Encouraging our children to help us with various aspects of our job (i.e. sort different assignments for teachers, organize the trash and recyclables for the garbage collection and recycle centers, and conduct household fire safety checks)
Helping our children learn how to pursue specific career explorations through research, participation in early college courses, and engaging in relevant work experiences

[Read more…]

Yvette King-Berg, College Readiness

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.