12/01/2003

A Career Exploration Guidance Plan for Elementary Students

by Nicola Dayes and Natasha Khan

Launching Students' Career Imaginations!

Some specific career needs targeted at elementary school-aged students include:
A systematic process that will enable children to develop sound educational and career plans (Starr, 1996), exploration of how self fits with specific careers (McIntosh, 2000), and a focus on values, interests, and abilities-- not on gender role stereotypes (Lupaschuk & Yewchuk, 1998).
The goals of our guidance plan include:


The tools needed to complete this classroom guidance lesson include:
6 sets of occupational card sorts (representing a wide variety of well-known and less familiar careers - created by the counselor or purchased), access to the Internet, Careership website, pencils, and paper.

The recommended procedure for this program is:


Some suggestions for follow up include: Having students create a collage that represents their career choice, inviting guest speakers from different occupations, or advertising a "Career of the Week" where teacher creates a bulletin board with important information about each career. This is an interactive board where students can share, comment, and research about each career. The school counselor will want to meet with class again at end of the year to see student progress, and compare similarities/differences of career choices from the first visit.

References:

Lupaschuk, D., & Yewchuk, C. (1998). Student perceptions of gender roles: Implications for counselors. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling, 20, 89-101.

McIntosh, I. (2000). Life career development: Implications for school counselors. Education, 120, 621-626.

Starr, M. F. (1996). Comprehensive guidance and systematic educational and career planning: Why a K-12 approach? Journal of Career Development, 23, 9-22.


Nicola Dayes was born in Clearwater, Florida. She graduated from Florida State University in 2002 with a BS in Psychology. She is currently attending graduate school at the University of South Florida in the Counselor Education program (school counseling track).

Natasha Khan was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from Western Maryland College in 2001 with a BA in Elementary Education and Psychology. She is currently attending graduate school at the University of South Florida in the Counselor Education program (school counseling track).

Printer-Friendly Version