As students get started with the Careers in Your Community Challenge, it can be tempting to jump straight to developing a submission. But it’s helpful to first identify the problem you’re trying to solve. That starts with understanding what career exploration looks like at your school and in the community, and where there may be opportunities to improve it.
Before developing your career exploration solution, take some time to assess what career exploration looks like with your students. Below are three quick brainstorming exercises that ask: What local career opportunities exist? How do students find and pursue them? Who can help students along the way?
Exercise 1: Map what’s around you.
Ask your students to pick a place of work they pass every day. This could be a hospital, grocery store, construction site, or something else. Ask them to list every career that keeps it running, especially those that may be less obvious. For example, a hospital needs doctors and nurses, but it also needs billing specialists, IT staff, food service professionals, and many others.
In small groups, students should write as many careers as they can on a shared board, then look up the education and training required for those jobs and explore which programs are available locally.
Ask your students: What surprised you? What was hard to find? What might have helped?
Exercise 2: Draw the path students take.
Ask each student to choose a career of interest and investigate the steps needed to pursue it.
Starting from where they are today, students can list the education, training, and experiences that lead to that career. They can use any career exploration resources they’d like, including CareerOneStop and Occupational Outlook Handbook, to fill in the details.
Ask your students: Where was the path clear? Where did you get stuck?
Exercise 3: Find people who can help.
Some career exploration happens through individual research, but the support of others can be just as important. People in the local community can provide firsthand knowledge and connections that students may not get from other resources available to them.
Give students ten minutes to list people they could talk to about the careers they’re exploring. Include employers, postsecondary institutions, and community groups like a local chamber of commerce or workforce development board. Then, as a group, bring the lists together and identify remaining gaps.
Ask students: Who on this list could best answer your questions about the careers you’re interested in? Who could tell you something that you can’t find online?
Keep what you find
Each activity gives students a different view of career exploration at your school and in the community. Take note of the barriers and opportunities that stand out: a career that students didn’t know existed, a confusing step in the exploration process, or an organization or person they don’t know how to connect to. Any of these could point to an opportunity to make career exploration better.
You don’t need a fully formed solution yet. Instead, use these observations to brainstorm how you might address one of the career exploration gaps you’ve identified.
Already exploring careers in your classroom? Share what you’re trying with [email protected] — we may feature it in a future newsletter.