Higher Education and Career Lesson Plans

Part One

Role of the School Counselor in Promoting College and Career Readiness

Curry and Milsom (2017) define college readiness as the disposition and mindset that enables a student to understand the structure and culture of postsecondary education and hence, to successfully navigate the challenges of college. On the other hand, career readiness has to do with possessing the technical, employability, and academic skills required for effective functioning in the workplace (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Different stakeholders play different roles in promoting students’ college and career readiness.

The role of the school counselor in promoting such readiness covers three domains: social/personal, career, and academic (Curry & Milsom, 2017). School counselors provide advising sessions as well as individual and group counseling sessions to guide students in identifying their hobbies and talents, and selecting courses effectively. They provide students with skills, assessments, as well as college and career information to help them understand the culture and structure of post-secondary education, the admission processes, costs, and the employability skills needed for success in the workforce. This helps to enhance career satisfaction and college acceptance in later years. School counselors also organize forums and workshops with community partners, parents, and other faculty members to help them understand their specific roles in getting students career and college ready, and to educate them on the strategies that they could use to achieve the same (Curry & Milsom, 2017).

On the academic domain, school counselors collaborate with educators to help learners establish strong academic foundations by supporting them to take up advanced placement courses and introducing them to college exploration programs, which they could use to assess their readiness for college (Paolini, 2019). Advanced placement programs expose students to college-level academic material, which helps them develop their critical thinking, technology, communication, problem-solving, and general intellectual skills (Paolini, 2019). Through classroom workshops, school counselors educate students on the college majors they need to take up to pursue specific careers and the qualifications associated with those majors (Paolini, 2019). Finally, school counselors offer individual and group counseling sessions to help students develop the attitudes, emotional skills, and social skills needed for success in college and the workplace (Curry & Milsom, 2017). For instance, school counselors play a fundamental role in helping students understand their personal values, beliefs, cultural heritage, and biases, all of which could potentially affect their ability to interact effectively with others. They journey with the student to develop a positive affirmation for themselves and others, and to appreciate diversity, which increases their readiness for both college and the workplace (Curry & Milsom, 2017).

The school counselor could use a range of developmentally-appropriate career interventions and assessments in promoting career and college readiness among P-12 students. For P1 to first grade students, counselors could use play therapy, which could either be integrated into the counseling curriculum or in the classroom (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Explorative play provides the most appropriate platform for teaching career-related insights to children. As part of explorative play, the counselor could provide play items and attire associated with different careers, such as firefighters, safari guides, or doctors, and have them play these roles (imitative role play) as part of exploring the careers they wish to pursue (Curry & Milson, 2017). Counselors could also use Ericksonian play therapy, where parallel communication is used to explain a metaphorical concept to students (Curry & Milson, 2017). For instance, they could use a puppet to explain what people in different careers do in a way that promotes fun and engagement (Curry & Milson, 2017).

Counselors could use recognition and matching activities to assess students’ knowledge on careers (Curry & Milsom, 2017). For instance, they could check what proportion of students are able to correctly match or identify items related to specific careers (Curry & Milsom, 2017).

For second and third graders, the counselor could use interactive games and fun activities that allow students to challenge the misconceptions they have while enhancing self-confidence (Curry & Milsom, 2017). For instance, they could create an imaginary fishpond and fish using locally available materials, such as laminated paper, and then have careers tagged to different ‘fish’. Students could then be allowed to collect fish in the pond, and respond to a set of questions about the career tagged to the fish they pick (Curry & Milsom, 2017). To promote collaboration, they could be allowed to refer questions they could not answer to one of their colleagues in the class (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Puzzle and art activities could also be used to promote career exploration by having students use crayons to visually map related careers or careers with certain characteristics (Curry & Milsom, 2017). The counselor could use recognition and matching activities to assess the students’ knowledge about careers by checking the proportion of students who are able to achieve a certain outcome. For instance, they could check the proportion of students able to correctly identify, by circling, related careers (Curry & Milson, 2017).

Students in forth and fifth grade are aware of the process of career planning, the value of good work habits, as well as the uses of career information (Curry & Milson, 2017). Students at this level have also begun to circumscribe some career choices as being more valuable than others. The counselor’s main aim is to guide students to explore individual careers as part of developing their self-efficacy around such decisions (Curry & Milson, 2017). This necessitates interventions that give the students first-hand experience to difficult or highly-valued occupations so as to build their self-efficacy and self-confidence (Curry & Milsom, 2017). The counselor could realize this by using technology for career exploration – for instance, they could introduce and guide the students in using online tools that help them understand their preferred careers better (Curry & Milsom, 2017). They could also organize cross-age programs in collaboration with the teachers, where students exposed to specific occupations, such as engineering. For instance, they are allowed to at interact with older students in engineering club, where they understand how engineers work and gain content knowledge, all of which helps to build their self-efficacy (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Activities such as essay-writing and student-run career fairs could be used to assess how well students in fourth and fifth grade understand their careers of interest.

For students in middle school (sixth and seven graders), career and college readiness interventions are centered on “helping students explore their personal fit with careers and college by examining their interests, aptitudes, dispositions, and values related to career and postsecondary options” (Curry & Milsom, 2017, p. 219). The aim is to support the students to conduct self-exploration, which involves understanding their values and personality in relation to college choices and the careers they wish to pursue. One of the assessments appropriate to students at this stage is the values card sort, which involves giving out a set of cards, each representing a certain career-related value, such as problem-solving, creativity, or teamwork, among other things (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Students receive a set of cards and are required to arrange the cards in order to represent the values they consider most/least important and to reflect on, or explain to their colleagues in a group setting how their selected order relates to their careers of choice (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Counselor could also use the career genogram activity, where the student builds their career and college knowledge by asking questions to their family members. The students could ask questions on the age at which family members made their career choices, what/who influenced these choices, what qualifications and education levels were required, and what factors influenced their educational attainment, among others (Curry & Milsom, 2017). The students could then present this information in a genogram, which allows them to determine how their career choices differ from their family members’ and their family’s role in influencing career choices.

For eighth graders, the authors recommend having the students take self-assessments such as the Holland’s Self-Directed Search (SDS), which allows them to identify their values, weaknesses, strengths, and future desires as the make high school choices leading up to their careers of interest (Curry & Milsom, 2017). The counselor then helps the students identify occupations that align with their personalities and to make informed decisions about their high school academic choices. This is particularly crucial for students who are unsure of what career line they wish to pursue. However, since students differ in their readiness to make academic and career choices, the counselor ought to utilize both individualized and classroom-based approaches to ensure they address all students’ unique concerns and questions. It may be crucial for the counselor to organize individual planning sessions to support students understand their self-assessment scores, how these inform their potential, and the career choices that best align with their potential and personality (Curry & Milsom, 2017). At the classroom level, the counselor could collaborate with the teacher to adopt contextual learning strategies that allow students to examine class content in a real-world setting. For instance, they could introduce cash registers uses in business to help students understand how basic arithmetic helps in successful business management (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Another strategy is to invite guest speakers in different occupations to share their experieces and help the studets understand how subject-specific content feeds into their future careers (Curry & Milsom, 2017).

In grade nine, students are beginning to understand who they are and what they wish to become in future. The counselor’s role is to support the students to develop a self-identity in terms of interests, personality type, and personal values in relation to post-secondary planning, academic success, and career (Curry & Milsom, 2017). Interventions for ninth graders should take into consideration the importance of self-concept, identity-development, and peers (Curry & Milsom, 2017).

Part Two

As discussed in part one above, counselors have a role to develop implement developmentally-appropriate assessments and interventions to support students’ career and college readiness. This section assesses the career and college readiness needs of three schools in different school levels - elementary, middle school, and high school – and identifies appropriate interventions for each school. Below is a summary of the needs assessment for each school:

Max Aasen Elementary School: A K-5 School with a total enrolment of 5 students, a class size of 29, and a student-teacher ratio of 18.1 to 1. The school is highly diverse because of its location between a poor and wealthy neighborhood – 25 percent of the student population are eligible for free lunch and breakfast, while 18 percent qualify for reduced price lunch and breakfast. Whites make up 52 percent of the student population, while African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians make up 24 percent, 14 percent, and 8 percent respectively. 15 percent of students are eligible for special needs services and 11 percent are English Language Learners. Results of the most recent career and college readiness survey shows that 65 percent of teachers at the school do not believe it is important to incorporate career and college readiness strategies into the curriculum. On average, 35 percent rarely or never incorporate career readiness strategies, while 47 do not incorporate them often. Only 21 percent of teachers believe such strategies are important for special needs students, 47 percent consider them important for gifted students, and 35 percent believe they are important for students of color.

Madison Middle School: A 6th to 8th grade school with a total student population of 743, a class size of 31, and a student-teacher ratio of 14.8 to 1. The school serves some of the district’s poorest families, with 61 percent of students eligible for free meals and 14 percent eligible for reduced price meals. The student demographics present a relatively balanced racial composition - 35 percent of students are African-American, 30 percent are whites, and 25 percent are Hispanic. Special needs and ELL learners make up 20 percent and 15 percent of the student population. College and career readiness survey results point to minimum focus on career and college readiness - only 28 percent of teachers believe college readiness strategies are important for middle school students, as compared to 47 percent who consider career readiness strategies important. On average, 37 percent of teachers often or very often incorporate such strategies in their curriculum, while 9 percent rarely or never incorporate them. Fewer teachers – 49 percent – consider career and college readiness strategies important or very important for special needs learners, compared to 64 percent and 69 percent who consider the same important for gifted students and students of color respectively.

Sylvia Plath High School: A 9-12 school with a total enrolment of 2,389 students. The school is located in an affluent neighborhood and serves some of the district’s richest families. Whites make up 58 percent of the population, African Americans make up 16 percent, while Hispanics and Asians each make up 12 percent. Only 25 percent of students are eligible for either free or reduced price meals. Special needs students make up 15 percent of the population, while ELL learners make up 8 percent. Survey results indicate that teachers at the school are more inclined towards college than career readiness – 78 percent of teachers consider college readiness important or very important, as compared to 71 percent who consider career readiness important. Only 9 percent of teachers consider college readiness unimportant or very unimportant, as compared to 15 percent who consider career readiness unimportant. Over 90 percent of teachers believe that career and college readiness are important for all students, including special needs students and students of color, although the superintendent complains of educator biases that make them focus on specific student groups rather than supporting all students to ensure equity I career readiness and college access.