Is going to college the right step after graduating from high school? Today’s labor market is changing constantly and new jobs are being created all the time. Many high school students graduate and head off to college, start taking classes, and assume a career choice will emerge over time. However, this approach is backward. In high school, students need to explore occupations that might be a good fit for them. While researching occupations, they will discover what kind of education and training is required for each occupation. Knowing what education and training is required for an occupation will help students know what to study at college or what training is necessary to take at a school with specialty training. Also, many occupations do not require a four-year college degree, such as a licensed practical nurse, an air-traffic controller, a sports coach, a patrol officer, a wind turbine technician, and lots of other occupations, but they do require specialized training.
Many high school students feel lost when it comes to looking for a career path. Nowadays in the schools, no one seems to take the time to help students check out career paths in depth, so they have no idea what kinds of careers are available to them and have no idea of how to find possible occupations that are a good fit for them.
Before a student can select a post-secondary educational path, they need to discover who they are. Each high school student needs to be seen as an individual person with different interests, strengths, skills, and learning styles. Every student, from ninth grade through twelfth grade, needs the opportunity to develop an individual career path that is designed for them to be successful in the job market. Time needs to be dedicated every school year for each high student to explore careers in depth to find the occupations that are a good fit for them. Checking Out Career Paths with Chaz, is an in-depth, self-discovery program designed to first gather specific information on each student about their learning style, their career interests, and their skills. Then the student can use this specific information while exploring occupations to find occupations that are a good match for them. This program uses the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website that gives an in-depth look at hundreds of occupations and provides a detailed summary for each occupation. With this information, students complete a matching activity that allows them to match their interests, strengths, skills, and learning styles to a few occupations to find some good matches. This begins their ongoing discovery of occupations that may a good fit them in the future.