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Tag: lesson plan
Slow Start
I HAVE FOUR MORE DAYS OF SUMMER
Yep. Four more days. What a Summer it has been. We have had some serious changes this Summer in my family, some super sad and some exciting. It always seems to happen that way that the Summer is so seldom a slow burn. I can’t decide which way I like more. But I am ready to head back.
The crazyiness will begin soon, as I step into a new school. After my babies left for High School I’ve decided to take the leap and start a new adventure. As sad as I am to say goodbye to my old school, I am really excited to get my hands into a new place, new population, and forge new friendships. I get so much inspiration from the people around me, sometimes I think they get fatigued from my harassment! So now it’s time to give someone else a turn.
To prep for returning, I started reading The Balanced Teacher Path which has really helped me get into the mood to set my mind right, and remember to support the teachers on my hallway. It’s such an easy read, contains personal stories, and suggestions for the classroom and home. I seriously recommend it, and think it would be an amazing all-school read.
I also got to spend today in training with all of the secondary counseling peeps in VB. It was tough to wake up early, but it was so perfect to get me reignited and ready for the year. I am itching to get in, take care of scheduling conflicts, and get the year rolling. It feels so good to be in a profession that excites me enough to get my tail out of yoga pants and into business.
More for Career
So, as I said earlier, I have been working on a small career lesson for my 8th graders. I found some awesome videos to use, and I was stumped trying to avoid yet another assessment to tell the babies what they must be when they grow up. Those things still make me nervous when I take them recreationally, and I am actually in my meant-for-me profession; I can’t imagine how it must make them feel. Granted, if presented correctly (which I think I’m still working on), I understand kids can get the point that career assessments are meant to simply explore the broader idea of what they might like. But in the age of so many serious tests and exams, I can’t imagine they would be able to relax enough to not feel like they would be banished from all educational rights if they answer incorrectly. Luckily, I found this really cool diagram from Willo O’brien (which turns out is actually a pretty inspirational and cool bog too):
I’ve seen this before, but I thought this version was especially appealing. I remade it by middle-school-izing the verbiage and adding blanks so that they could fill in the information. You can get the PDF of the Career diagram by clicking the jpeg below, or you can snip the image to re-size if you’d like!
Now I just have to cross all of my fingers and toes that I can get the point across to a classroom of pre-teens before the 8th grade minds start to joke about my using the words “sweet spot.” I’ll have to work fast.
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.
