Industry-Based College and Career Readiness

Reposted from EdSource:

Ensuring schools are adequately preparing students for careers is just as important as ensuring they prepare students for college, says a new paper that proposes districts add specific career-readiness measures, such as the number of students who complete work-based learning programs, to their accountability plans to the public. “Developing strong, supportive pathways that incorporate both college- and career-ready skills is our best bet for ensuring students will find their way to a productive future,” said the paper, released Tuesday by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, or SCOPE.

The report provides three recommendations for career preparation measures that schools should include in their Local Control and Accountability Plans, or LCAPs. The plans, required under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula for school districts, require districts to outline how they will meet eight educational priority areas mandated by the state. One of those areas requires districts to ensure that all students have access to classes preparing them for college and careers.

The report’s authors based their recommendations on a review of college and career measures in a number of states. The paper recommends that accountability plans include:

• The proportion of students who complete career preparation programs that blend college-preparatory academics with workplace training;

• The proportion of students who complete work-based learning experiences; and

• The proportion of students who demonstrate they have a set of skills and knowledge in a certain field, such as those who obtain industry-approved work certificates upon high school graduation, or those who earn “virtual badges” certifying they are proficient in certain areas.

Read More…

5 Tips To Advance Professionally Through Networking [INFOGRAPHIC]

With 70 to 80 percent of job offers coming as the direct result of networking, even the staunchest of introverts are realizing they need to shake some hands in order to advance their careers. Unfortunately, many of us seem to make networking much more difficult than it need be. We focus on quantity over quality, for instance; we seem to think that shaking more hands and collecting more business cards is more important than shaking the right hands and generating enough interest in us to be asked for our business cards.

Read more here.

12 Ways to Make This Year Your Best! [INFOGRAPHIC]

Here’s to the best year of your career yet! Make it count!

Drivers and Passengers

You are either driving or you’re along for the ride.

Driving, you get to determine speed, route, lane changes, stops, and ultimately, your destination. For most, it also means you have the final say in what comes out of the speakers and cabin climate control.

Along for the ride, you get to look out the window, adjust your visor, check out what’s in the glove compartment, read, eat and sleep. If the mood hits you and your driver right, you can also have some decent conversation.

It’s the same when you go into work. You’re either driving or you’re along for the ride.

If you’re driving, you are pushing your destination, influencing your route, making stops and lane changes that support where you’re going, and you insist on having a say in the climate and culture of your workplace.

If you’re along for the ride, you follow others’ direction, focus on the work you are handed, keep your head down and your ears open for the workplace drivers, and make your destination the end of each work day and work week.

Drivers operate on the optimism that by taking control you’re less likely to end up on the back end of a five-car pile-up. Passengers operate on the premise that someone else can take charge; they feel safe putting on their seat belt and relinquishing control.

We all have to be passengers some times. But who wants to spend their entire driving career doing whatever they have to in order to not be in the driver’s seat? No matter how hesitant or afraid we may be, we all have the desire to drive.

As a working professional, you have the vehicle and the license to drive. Why not push yourself to rack up some hours behind the wheel? Start with some short trips. Expand your radius as you build up experience and confidence.

Find a buddy or two also seeking more drive time and encourage each other along. Share the driving. Coach one another. Why drive alone?

Someday when you look back over your career, you’ll be glad you decided to drive.

Sir Ken Robinson: Redefining Learning, Career Paths, Dreams & Success [VIDEO 8:49]

Robinson discusses how college and careers have changed over time, and how the assumptions of the past may not hold true for young people today. He brings the discussion full circle back to creativity, and why it is essential to the future of public education.

21st Century Work: Career-Readiness Isn’t What It Used To Be [INFOGRAPHIC]

Thinking of jobs, careers, and pay is–by some–being replaced with the idea of work, relationships, and meaning. Technology and the resulting connectivity are a part of this. In the 21st century, we all have personal “brands”–digital footprints that precede and proceed us, leaving a record of our interactions and ideas for anyone to see. The concept of career-readiness is changing because how we live and work is changing. Traditionally, this conversation is reduced to a “characteristics of” dialogue, where we promote ideas like collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. The more precise we can be as educators in our views of what work is actually becoming, the better we can prepare students for that always-changing reality.