1/28/03
Today's class is the first class of this elective which is a semester course. Jack starts the class of by having students work with a partner. Students would share what their interests were or "who they were" with their partners who would then introduce them to the class.
After going around and having student introductions, Jack goes into an overview of the careers class such as content, grades, and intro.
First, Jack ask the question "what's the difference betweena job and a career?" and gets some responses from the class. He then gives a story about Mr. R, a fellow teacher at Parkway, who has had a long list of interesting jobs. He then goes to talk about the different between ninth graders who are looking for jobs and 12 graders who are looking for a career. Next he transitions into talking about the "institutional" which is an opportunity for seniors to learn something outside the school building and get school credit. Some seniors use that institutional as a job while others view it as a step in their career path. Jack gives some examples of institutionals such as shadowing a judge or volunteering at a food kitchen. He asks students who has ever volunteered. During this point of the class, students seem to be getting bored as the teacher continues to talk for an extended time.
Finally Jack goes into a discussion about the content and grades of the class. The content of the careers class includes 1) interests (Jack says something about finding out about what interests we have will help us to figure out potential jobs/careers, says "it is the intest that will keep you there", and then tells a story about his brother-in-law who did not like his job at the post office despite the high pay), 2)skills (what you can do), 3) tools (writing a resume in the first half, and doing an interview in the second half of the semester). He tells the resume and interview are critical parts of the class and an incomplete in either assignment will result in a failure in the class. He talks about how he computes his grades (total number of assignments/total done by student). At this point, class ends.
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In general, the careers class was less interesting and less effective than Jack's other classes. Jack does not seem to spend as much time on the curriculum and the curriculum does not seem as relevant to the students at this point in their lives. Many of the careers classes were combined with Mr. R's career classes for joint lectures/activities which made the classes even harder to manage and engage. The students enjoyed doing hands-on activities such as making a collage resume, typing up their formal resumes, or doing a personal inventory or skills assessment. On the other hand, there were many classes when Jack would frequently lecture on the instructions/directions for the different activities. The writing of the resume was a very big part of the curriculum and seemed to drag on as students would learn about the different parts, type them up, and revise them. Near the end of the term, students were beginning to research specific careers/jobs that they were interested in. I think that I would change the nature of the course to start with the personal inventories/skill assessments, then move to researching jobs/careers, and then going into the resume assignment so that students would naturally progress in their involvement in the subject matter as opposed to starting with the unfamiliar and more academic aspects of this class. I would also lessen the amount of "teacher talk" as much as possible because ninth/tenth graders have shorter attention spans and are more interested in interactive, hands-on or social activities.
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