Career Lesson

I have been looking for a career lesson to go along with an assessment explanation that wouldn’t overwhelm the middle school babies with the feeling that they must choose their life path immediately or else they would end up unemployed on their friend’s couch with unwashed hair and a desolate future.  I mean, is it me, or do we sometimes skip a huge step in the whole helping-children-decide-their-future-at-the-age-of-two game?  So, I decided to start by just looking for informational videos of different jobs.  This way, kids can get interested in professions in general, before they even start to think about which one they think is for them.  I found some good videos here, and then hit the JACKPOT with the Gigniks site.  These videos are so unlike many of the career informational videos available- they are young (a dude that forecasts sports trends), and diverse (a STEM chick on a motorcycle), and interesting (a kid that gets paid to make robots, and another that designs roller coasters).

I picked three or four to show the kiddos, and made a small sheet for them to fill out.  I’m going to have them first guess what the professions are, because these are all really awesome and unconventional.  How many kids will know what a “Tech Evangelist: is (um…because I had no clue)?!  Then they will later write what they learn it actually is.  There are also good vocab words like “intern,” “networking,” and my favorite new term, “resume-bombing.”  I can also see a ton of opportunities for discussion, and the main point is that we should think openly about jobs, because there are many variations and non-traditional jobs out there; if you like computers, it doesn’t mean you have to sit at a desk all day, if you like to play sports, it doesn’t mean you have to be an athlete or coach, and so on.  Thanks California Career Center for putting some time into videos that are appealing to the littles.