Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom Ideas for ICA Lower‐Level ESOL activities/changes Notes in red show connections to course sections. I.
Here are some ESOL teachers’ ideas for the most useful order of lessons for using with lower‐ or mid‐level students (SPL 0‐5): 
Lesson 5, Self‐exploration, Activity #3, Identifying Transferable Skills: A. 1. Worksheet: Use the “Things I Like” first because it creates a good atmosphere and students can put together ideas from their own lives first. Then have them do the “Things I am Good At” worksheet. 2. After these exercises, have them fill out the “Things I Have Done” and “Skills Identification” lists. 3. Then, have students use these lists to supplement the information on the first two worksheets. The lists provide illustrations of skills that will help students see more of the skills they already have. B. 
Self‐Exploration: Introduction to the Tools 1. Start with Lesson 5, Part 2 “Things I Have Done,” because it builds off the timeline in Lesson 5 Part 1. Students enjoy and get into timelines. It would be a good jumping‐off point to talk about their skills and life experiences. The long checklist on the handout may take too long to get through, so it might be good to use the simplified version. 2. Next, use “Things I Like.” Doesn’t take a lot of time and is easily accessible to all students. It lets them practice their interview skills and learn about their classmates. 3. Then use “Things I Am Good At.” Easy for students to understand but challenges them to stretch their vocabulary. It also makes a connection between their interests and career. The extension activity would be interesting as students become the teachers and present to the class. C. These worksheets begin as a great scaffold for students to refer back to as they plan their goals. Use them in this order: 1) “Things I Like” (not too intimidating and a good warm‐up for the other worksheets) Most people feel at ease talking about what they like. 2) “Things I Have Done” 3) “Skills ID” 4) “Things I Am Good At” 1
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom D. Use the “Things I Like” as an icebreaker. Helps to get students to know themselves and classmates. Before presenting the “Things I Am Good At” handout, give out examples of scenarios other people have made, organized, fixed, etc., and ask students to identify the skills used in each of these tasks. Once they have understood the activity, ask them to complete the handout based on their own experiences. Do it this way because it’s harder to talk about yourself and identify things we do well. This last sheet is a confidence booster and not having proficient English skills doesn’t mean that they are not great at so many other things. For ESOL SPL 4‐5 (Level 3 class), use Lessons 4 and 7 in that order. The checklist layout is similar to what they may encounter in an inventory list or other work or school‐related handouts, so it’s good “realia” practice. Ask them to note the bolded categories first and predict what might be included in the sub‐list before completing it. Assuming that the “lifeline” activity has been completed, students are prepared to reflect more on “things done” and transferable skills. II. Skills Inventories Discussion: Do this order: 1.
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“Things I Like” “Things I Have Done” “Skills I” “Things I am Good At” It is less intimidating to start from what people like. It is good to separate “Things I Have Done” from “Things I am Good At,” since they are somewhat similar. Skills ID should be done before the section “Things I Am Good At,” since you need to apply the concept of Skills used. “Things I Have Done”: a lot of possibly new vocabulary and too much text. Skills ID: wide variety of things recognized as skills, a lot of possibly new vocabulary and too much text. “Things I Am Good At”: open ended. Not enough space for students to write their skills. Rotate the text to be “landscape.” Skills Inventories worksheets begin as a great scaffold for students to refer back to as they plan their goals. Use them in this order: 1. “Things I Like,” as it is not too intimidating and would be a good warm‐up for the other workshops 2. “Things I am Good At,” explaining that it could be anything they are good at (cooking, cleaning, building). 3. “Things I Have Done”: tell them to refer back to the Thing I am Good At worksheet 4. Work together on the “Skills Identification” worksheet, using the information from the first 3. 2
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom III.ESOL teachers’ ideas for supplemental activities and classroom use: Skill Inventories: 
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Career Exploration section: Project Instructions: Occupational Exploration Lesson Planning Self‐Exploration: Online Assessment Tools On the “Things I Like” worksheet I would change 9. to “my favorite subjects in school are or were,” and the lists provide more space for the “other” categories. “Things I Like”: modify by turning the 9 statements into questions and print those on the back for students to use for discussion in small groups. Make this into an icebreaker activity by having students guess the student response written on the worksheet. Lesson 8 “Things I Am Good At”: simple format, simple language, lends itself to small discussions within the class. Modify the lesson slightly by demonstrating the “skills used” as a whole group exercise. Make a transparency of the Skills Identification sheet (pp. 51‐52) and model how to fill in the skills section to use with their timeline event of “Attending English or GED class.” The instructions say to identify what things on the list they did in order to begin attending class; however, only a few skills listed relate to that event. So, use the worksheet but not the lesson. Lesson 7 “Identifying Skills”: too complex for beginning ESOL students; vocabulary too advanced. Modify with the use of visuals or reduce the amount of cut‐up skill strips? Also, there is now an alternate, simplified version of this list for ESOL. Don’t use Lesson 7 “Identifying Skills.” Skills list is too long and too busy. Trim the skills in each category to a more manageable number, maybe 4‐5 skills. Also, there is now an alternate, simplified version of this list for ESOL. Don’t use both free time and recreation questions (mean the same thing). Start the lesson with a paired conversation activity to get the ideas flowing. B.Re: “Things I Have Done”: break this into a 3‐day activity, one day for each topic. Support the ideas presented with images. Providing visuals and limiting the text would make the concepts more accessible to all learners. C. “Skills ID”: To explain the idea of “skills,” I would ask students to “dissect” a job, like teacher, and name skills a good teacher has. Find an image for each skill. Discuss these images and name skills for each image. Limit the txt on the paper—there is too much new vocabulary for our learners. 3
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom F. “Things I am Good At”: Not enough room on the paper to write the skills. Break this into a 2‐day event. Speaking warm‐ups with pairs, “What are some things you have made?” and then “What skills did you need?” Next, have students write. “Things I Like” worksheet might not resonate with students. Use “Things I Have Done” and “Things I Am Good At.” Have students look at the bold titles in “Skills Identification” and then predict what might be included. Apply this idea to ‘Things I have Done.” Put the categories on the board and brainstorm with the class about what might be included under each category, writing their ideas on the board so they can refer to them. Then give them the handout, edited to include fewer line items and with blanks at the bottom of each category where students could add their own ideas. Precede this activity with the “Life Line” lesson (Lesson 5, Part 1). Asking students to identify what they did to get to ESOL class (Part 2) wouldn’t make sense for them.” Have students share their Life Lines in small group discussions and then introduce the “Things I Have Done” activity. From there go to Lesson 8. Lessons 6 and 7 are appropriate and more useful for higher‐level students, while Lessons 5 and 8 can be adapted for low‐
intermediate level. Brainstorming and predicting the “Skills ID” and “Things I Have Done” lists would create a strong student‐centered classroom, rather than having students just check items off quickly without thinking, just to get through those long lists. Skills Inventories: adapt the worksheets a little. Not translate them, but familiarize yourself with their meaning in case the students ask me to translate something. Use the worksheets as part of a Self‐
Exploration lesson. 1. First worksheet to use: “Things I Am Good At.” Help students reflect on what their values, accomplishments/struggles and goals they want to accomplish area. Ask students to consider what they are passionate about and how it influences decisions for the future. Help them realize that as they “discover” themselves (self‐exploration!) and the things that inspire them, it will help them reach their goals. 2. Next use the “Things I Like” worksheet. 3. Use the “Skills Identification” and “Things I Have Done” worksheets last. It might be easy for some students to check something on these without really thinking about it. “Things I Have Done” worksheet will help students see how things they have done are transferable to other areas. In “Things I Like,” eliminate Question 9 as most students don’t read the newspaper. The Skills Identification form might be too hard for ESOL Level 2, would have to spend too much time getting them through the vocabulary to really get them to appreciate this form. “Things I Am Good At” is very empowering. List a bunch of things like cooking, biking, taking care of kids, etc. and make it read “I can” so the student check it off if they could do that skills. Then have them talk to a partner and identify things they both could do. Make the vocabulary much more simple and many of the items listed things that most students could do, so it can show them their many strengths. 4
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom Too often ESOL students are focused on all they still need, so giving them simple worksheets where they can see all they can already do, is a more motivating way to look at skill identification. Create different levels of forms for the course, with more accessible vocabulary for more beginning ESOL students. Add or provide images when possible. Ask for students’ favorite subjects in school. Use “can do” terminology. Modify and replace Questions 3 & 5 with other questions that are more relevant to them. Next, use the “Things I Have Done” and “Skills Identification” Once completed, ask questions to serve as a discussion, e.g., 
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“Based on your result, do you prefer to work with people, things or data?” “Are you surprised by the results?” “On your skills Identification sheet, where do you see more check marks?” “What is your strongest skill?” etc. Break the “Things I Have Done” into “people,” “data,” and “things” categories, which will help students realize where their strengths and interests lie. This transitions nicely into Lesson 5, “Skills Identification.” Don’t alter the “Instructions for Conducting the Activity.” Include an extension activity. Disadvantages of the worksheets are the length of the sublists and the need to define some vocabulary (e.g., “handicrafts.”) Have students generate their own lists first from the subtitles and then add to their lists from then handout lists. This is also good writing/spelling practice for list generation. Lesson 6 & 8: Have a guest speaker (e.g., from the college, who is the multicultural student advisor) use the “Things I Like” handout as part of the presentation to all levels. “Things I Am Good At” works well with Levels SPL 0‐3 and is a real confidence booster when lower‐level English speakers realize the skills and interests they do have, even with limited English proficiency. Educational Pathways 
Career Exploration section: Project Instructions: Occupational Exploration Lesson Planning Career OneStop: I wish they had a few more occupations listed, that are more relevant to students. Having a visual of the ladder/lattice for construction, as many students work in this area, would help them see the progressive steps that could be taken as well as showing them the later jobs that are available. Many students may not be aware of different jobs that are comparable, and having them listed this way is helpful. It will show them the choices they may have if they decide or need to leave 5
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom their current job. The language is overall understandable, some assistance with vocabulary would be needed when reading the job descriptions. Students can see and make comparisons between the different rungs of the ladder in terms of responsibilities, as well as the additional work experience that may be needed to move up. 
Activity #6: Using Online Resources for Occupational Exploration Occupational Exploration Lessons We need to be realistic with students as to what types of jobs are appropriate for them at this juncture and to lead them in the direction of bigger and better goals as they gain new education and skills. Start the unit with Lesson 1 “Using the Internet.” Spend a good deal of time going over the Occupational Outlook Handbook website and terminology. The computer lab projector will be a great aid in modeling and navigating the website. Next, have the class complete Worksheet B together. Break this lesson into two classes. Pair the students into high/low ability levels to complete their own worksheet. Some older students struggle with the computer, so pairing them with a more technologically adept student eases some of their apprehension of computers and gives them some confidence in using technology. Use Lesson 1 and Lesson 3 (“Informational Interviews.”) Have students explore the Occupational Outlook Handbook in class. It’s one of the friendlier sites for beginning ESOL students. Prepare by completing one occupation, Finish Carpenter, on the Version B. worksheet and model it in class. Enlarge the worksheet so students have space to write, so put two columns on the front and 2 columns on the back. As a class, complete the second occupations, CNA, with only the teacher using the computer/projector. Proceed slowly to accommodate the variety of skilled computer users in the class. After that, students can explore the site and complete the worksheet. Lesson 3 “Informational Interviews” gives the students the opportunity to practice their oral English skills. Makes sure every student is comfortable asking the interview questions, so lots of role‐playing with feedback is essential. Solicit interviewees within your building instead of having students solicit, if possible. Beginning ESOL students may not be ready for this step. The teacher could also video the student presentations and share with class for feedback. Barriers include: 
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Difficulties with getting access to computer lab frequently enough Student’s limited computer skills Students’ limited opportunity outside of lab to use a computer again. Have instructions explicitly written out ahead of time will help with Lessons 1 and 2, to save time. Divide Lessons 1 and 2 into two days, with the first day of each lesson spent mostly in the computer lab and Day 2 to discuss what we researched. 6
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom Walk most of the class step by step through the sites, but having directions written down will allow for those more adept technically to move on without the teachers. Use BLS and MassCIS sites, so they can compare information and gather any missing information not previously found. 
Online Occupational Exploration Try Lesson 6: “Workers’ Rights,” which has many goals such as identifying job responsibilities, learning policies at work, requesting a schedule changes; however, it’s missing a piece on workplace laws. Explain and cover some of the Federal laws and get students thinking about their rights. This lesson ties back to Section 1, where discrimination is discussed, so this might be another way to revisit that topic. Use OSHA site: http://www.osha.gov/about.html (for Lesson 6) info at the glance about OSHA can be found in Spanish, Vietnamese and Portuguese. Useful for those in landscaping and construction. Lesson 1: “Using the Internet”: would take extra preparation. Along with language barriers, many students have limited computer experience. Meet with the computer teacher and plan a lab experience with him/her.  Occupational Exploration, Activity #5: One Stop Career Centers  Occupational Exploration: Online Occupational Exploration Bring in speakers from the One Stop Career Center, and/or local community college, to bring the job search alive for students and provide vital information about the local job market. This brings another voice into the mix and gives very concrete information about options. Have students research jobs in the Occupational Outlook Handbook and read about other people’s work experience in Studs Terkel’s Working. Add a resume‐writing class to give students a chance to frame their work history within the context of the information they’ve gathered and their career desires. Start with Lesson 1 split into 2 days. It can be difficult for ESOL students to understand the difference between career and job. First day: start the lesson with making multiple sets of 3 cards; each set has a career path/ladder, e.g., home health aide, certified nursing assistant, nurse; On the board write career categories: health care, cooking, education. Shuffle the set of 3 cards and students will place the cards in the correct (or not) category. As a group, discuss which order to put them in and why. The cards are jobs, the categories are careers. Talking about career planning is important for our students. For prep for Day 2, change the language on the Career Planning Model: change “Occupation” to “Job,” delete the words “process” and ”model.” Use fewer words to negotiate so they can get to the concept. First do the extension activity. Discuss how students got their first jobs. Did they plan for the job? Why/How? Also discuss how they will plan to get the jobs they would like to have. Share model and discuss. 7
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom Navigating Websites 
Career Exploration section: Project Instructions: Occupational Exploration Lesson Planning MassCIS provides a lot of information regarding the process of finding a job that is right for you and it has a tab to create a personal MassCIS portfolio. Student might encounter confusion on the website and would need a lengthy pre‐lesson. At times it’s hard to figure out where to go next because there is a lot of info on the screen, disorienting at times. Difficulties with the login page and many pages require multiple downloads, which slow down the flow of the web site and are confusing. The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) is more user‐friendly, clearer and easier to navigate and find information. Students would be more likely to research their chosen occupational and find relevant information about their career. OOH also has a Spanish translation and a link to O*Net that give more detailed information about the career. O*Net could be a great tool in a small group setting or 1/1. The Reality Check video (length of video and images and content) would really help students think about wishes vs. truth. Calculating how much you need per month/year is a huge life skills lesson and is real math in action. These websites would need quite a bit of scaffolding. So much new vocabulary, but if you can save your information and work on it again later, it would be useful. Career OneStop videos (including in Spanish) is great, too bad there aren’t other languages too. The videos allow students to check out an occupation and the details without leaving the comfort of the computer lab. The videos about Skills and Abilities are great because you can get clarity about job choice. OOH was great at taking a career area (health care) and showing many of the jobs, short descriptions and salary. Being able to compare on the same page would be good for learners. Career OneStop videos are useful for students, pace and language used are appropriate. Students can read along with the videos. The site is tricky to navigate as there is so much to it, but the information is good. MassCIS is a very busy site and students might struggle to navigate through it. It would be very easy to end up doing a skills inventory, instead of job searching. Language in the GLOBAL search function is moderately complex and would be difficult for most students to understand. Not a good format for the “Career Exploration” worksheet: it should have lines for writing the information below the question. MassCIS acceptable but challenging for ESOL population. Good sites: 
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”Princeton Review,” very simple language and geared to high school students. OOH: clean visually, inviting, and easy to navigate. “Occupational Info for Kids” tab is really cool, with pictures (of kids) and word clouds e.g., “I like to fix things.” Visual nature, ease of use. How to help prepare students to use these resources? Lots of time and practice, though not all student will welcome this. Some ideas: o pulling small groups of students to work together in the lab, 8
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom o
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modeling a typical job search using the LCD projector. Assign simple Web quests for optional homework Students could work in pairs, with a strong technical student assisting a weaker technical student emailing job descriptions to friends Saving job sires to their Favorites Refining searches. Use video content for students to practice their listening and comprehension skills Do this as a whole class activity. Use pictures, limited text for ESOL students. World of Work Map is fun to use and interactive, but too much extraneous information and reference to the ACT, test scores, etc., on the home page that would be confusing for students to read, especially since most wouldn’t take the ACT test. Only use this as part of a lesson, such as Lesson 7, “Identifying Skills,” and work with the map as a group exercise in the computer lab. It could provide a quick overview for students of jobs they may be interested in. MassCIS has very clear and clear graphics and is very easy to read with simple language. However, there are so many possibilities as to what one can do on this site that the students would need some planning and guidance as to what they would want to do. The assessment tools Interest Profiler has far too many questions for an ESOL student. However, all the assessment tools are also in Spanish, which could be helpful for an extensive test such as this one, so they could get the value without getting frustrated trying to understand all the vocabulary. Games such as the Work Importance Locator Cards could be done as a group in class or on their own. The occupations links, career planner, etc., are all useful tools. The Real World interviews also could be read in class and discussed. This site is useful in class and as a planning tool that each student could use with the career counselor. Some may need additional support to use all the tools offered on the site, e.g., “My MassCIS Portfolio,” but each student could get value according to ability level and interest. The pay tables by job/region teach additional reading and information‐gathering skills based on realia. For students who are parents, there’s a Junior Planner for children; I would encourage parents to work with their children on the junior activities and engage the whole family in career planning. 
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Career Exploration section: Project Instructions: Occupational Exploration Lesson Planning Self‐Exploration: Online Assessment Tools MassCIS assessment tools are easy to use. Students can get information based on the area where they live. With the Reality Check, students can get an idea of how much occupations in our area pay; students are very curious about salaries and the pay of certain jobs. This will become a new research tool for this info. Occupational direct tool is perfect for those that have a career in mind; they can type in that career and get a good idea of what the earnings are and see the monthly income generated from 9
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom that career. It doesn’t provide much info about the career itself, but OOH is useful for this. There is detailed info about different careers, e.g., duties, work schedule, education necessary for thee positions, the job outlook for this position. Also similar occupations, since students may not even realize different options along the same lines. Salary info is broad and not based on local area. You can filter a search by salary, ed level, projected job growth, etc. Start with this site to get students looking at different jobs, and, once they narrow down, direct them to the first site so they can learn more about the pay. Next Steps.org site provides general info interesting for student, but geared toward teenagers and based on Canadian data. Could be semi‐useful as an additional tool just for basic info about a job. MassCIS has additional categories that are not included in the OOH: common work activities, skills, physical demands, and advancement opportunities, for example. 
Insert a link to this section in “The Substance of Career Planning,” The Appendices, Appendix E. ESOL teachers’ ideas for supplemental materials: 1) Choose additional chapters from Studs Terkel’s “working,” which is pretty old (1974) but includes a lot of real‐life people talking about their jobs in a realistic way. There is also a cartoon version that is very engaging, and newer. Both are available from the SABES library. 2) Massachusetts Worker Education Roundtable has some wonderful materials about employment, for use with ESOL students. Sample activities are available online. They include a. Roundtable's Workers' Basic Legal Protections on the Job‐‐ESOL Curriculum b. Roundtable's Workplace Health and Safety ESOL Curriculum c. Contextualized Curriculum for Workplace Education 3) SABES online course, “Adapting Workforce Development Materials for ESOL” (see SABES calendar at calendar.sabes.org/ for details about future offerings) 
Lesson Planning Project Page: Occupational Exploration Lesson Planning LESSON PLANNING RESOURCES The SABES ESOL Support page ‐ http://sabes.org/info‐center/research‐resources/esol‐resources/ ‐ has several helpful resources: 1) Lesson Planning Resource Guide ‐ The Guide gives an overview of why lesson planning is so important and describes its basic components. The Guide also includes lesson plan templates, sample lesson plans and sample rubrics. 10
Integrating Career Awareness into the
ABE & ESOL Classroom 2) ESOL Curriculum Frameworks ‐ The ESOL frameworks is a valuable resource and planning tool regarding what students need to know. "A curriculum framework offers a basic structure for how and what we teach in adult basic education programs. It does not contain lesson plans or scope and sequence charts, but it does describe the content areas and skills with which each program and teacher can design a curriculum that is relevant to the needs of his/her particular group of learners. Curriculum frameworks are meant to provide a guide to instruction at the local level." (Source: CF, page 6) 3) The Life Skills, College and Career Readiness Guide for ESOL Learners ‐ A collaborative effort of SABES, ACLS, and the CAELA (Center for Adult English Language Acquisition) Team provides a rich resource for you. It’s a collection of tasks that you can utilize in the classroom to promote the development of your students’ skills for next steps’ success. The competencies are broken down into life skills indicators, academic indicators, and career indicators. 11