Career Guidance Collaborative
#5: 8/30/2012, PCC
Take-Aways
General Group:
Offer food for parent/teacher/staff events
When a position leaves or is cut the info and the process leaves with it.
Solution to get ‘buy-in’ is to take 1-day at a time and convince the school boards
to direct the Superintendants to lead the principles to support the teachers to assist the
counselors and engage the community/workforce and parents to IMPACT THE STUDENTS.
A strategy to engage Elem and MS (HS too) in college/career culture is to offer
teachers the option to wear jeans on Friday ONLY IF they wear a college logo shirt and/or shirt
that symbolizes their career/trade.
Nameplates with college/trade logo outside their classrooms works too.
Hang resumes outside classroom/office doors too.
Data shows that having exposure to career and the world of work in 6th grade
results in less pregnancy rates, less drug/alcohol use, increase in graduation rates. WE NEED
TO SHARE MORE OF THIS DATA!
Frustration: Quality ICAP processes and career guidance efforts are done by quality
counselors who are supported and believed in by quality leaders at the district level. If
counselors are continuously cut, these quality processes will not be able to occur.
The Community Colleges help ‘fill’ the lack of counselors in schools but can only
do so with limited resources, time and expertise.
Administrators need to know this and need to learn about what to ‘officially’ do
with their School Counselor (what they are trained and qualified to implement vs. what the
original mindset of having them is).
CSCA: Colorado School Counseling Association is working on trainings to
enhance this relationship between Administrator and Counselors.
Falcon D49:
8th grade – CiC
MS students get brought to the HS to see the programs offered.
CTE purchased TVs placed in 2 of the 3 middle schools to run through slideshows
and show active classrooms of HS programs as a way of exposing the students to their options.
9th grade – Freshman Seminar (English classes)
10-12th – counselors visit English and Social Studies classes
All students use CiC. It’s also used when taking the IT class. IT uses more ‘cluster’
training and lessons.
District uses CTE Plans of Study and have created Career Academies: Healthcare, IT,
Engineering, Broadcasting, Visual/Design Arts, Biotech and alternative school has Catering.
If interested, student gets ‘flagged’ in Infinite Campus (IC)
Intentional course scheduling and planning occurs.
When student graduates from the Academies, they receive: a
certificate, recognized at graduation and have a specific academy cord with the cap/gown.
Because Falcon is a high military family population, word gets out of the programs they
offer when families explore the different schools of choice online.
Portability and transferability of ICAP is still unclear.
Falcon has invested in MS CTE programs – IT/Engineering
Purchased 2 new computer labs and robotics supplies.
Falcon has been broken up into Zones (departments)
CTE Director invited CTE and Content teachers to a 1x year overview session to
get informed of the ‘latest and greatest’. Counselors and Administrators are invited too.
District 20:
ICAP is fro 6-12th grade.
Naviance begins in 9th – 12th
.5 credit seminar class occurs 1x week for students 9-12.
4 out of those classes are given to the Counselors for ICAP specific work
Happens as classroom work mostly due to limited computer lab access.
All teachers are Seminar Instructors
Keeping consistency with how the teachers use this time and how
they guide the students in varied.
Keeping ICAP electronic will help when assignments are given outside of classes.
Will be moving to all activities being on Naviance
Unsure how to best make this portable to colleges/postsecondary options for the
student after graduation
Tentative solution – download ‘summary page’ and upload it into the
students CiC account (their portfolio). OR purchase the Naviance Student Account so they can
log in after they leave the high school.
College advisors need to be made aware of this and how to navigate it.
Most colleges utilize CiC.
ICAP taskforce will begin this year made up of 1 Counselor and 1 Administrator from
each of the secondary schools in the district.
They do have an elementary engineering/STEM career exploration program.
District 11:
Everyone uses CiC
6-8th = Exploration
Counselor Led lessons
9-12th = Planning
Counselor + CTE led lessons – supported by CTE Director
Devised a Scope and Sequence plan for each grade level with the activity, competency,
outcome and role of the leader included.
Activities are done in Computer classes
All staff were trained on CiC (including: custodial, librarians, bus drivers, para
professionals etc…)
Teachers are directly engaged but other support staff are not necessarily
but are ‘pulled’ in every once in a while.
Worked on being more aligned and collaborative with each other this past year.
This was a 3.5 year process to really get it going. IT WASN’T EASY NOR FAST.
When a new counselor comes into the district, the other counselors guide and teach the
scope and sequence so that everyone is ‘on board’ and the transition feels more seamless.
Manitou Springs:
9-12th grade only using CiC
Advisory everyday for 25 minutes at the end of the day
Lessons delivered by 2 counselors and 2 trained teachers
Last year’s obstacle was access to computers. This year they have IPADs for the
students.
Teachers in the advisory are given a syllabus, the counselor/teacher team goes in
to do a ‘check –in’ and support the students in doing the activities.
Want to move towards a culture of ‘everyone guiding’
Unsure with what to do about accountability.
Can they prove student success through running a report on CiC??
Champions of ICAP: SpEd instructor, G/T instructor, Freshman level teachers and NOT
PE!
Ellicott Middle School:
Grades 6: REAL Curriculum everyday.
Created by ‘Second Nature’ and is FREE
Second Nature staff teach the course, then they co-teach it with the 6th
grade teachers, then the 6th graders can teach it on their own.
Grades 7-8: CiC – Roads to Success curriculum
Last class of the week
Led by all teachers
Piggybacks the results of the EXPLORE test that 8th graders take
World of Work, RIASEC and Cluster lesson!
Financial Literacy is taught in tech class
GOAL Academy:
Require a .5 credit class for 1 semester specific to ICAP.
Use CiC and link it to NovaNet which stores the student ICAP and curriculum with
standards.
Every class that is taught at GOAL has a Career Component embedded.
Waiting for funding to update their process through NovaNet - CiC keeps
updating so they have to ‘keep up with it’.
A lot is done on paper now.
ICAPs are sometimes already established when the student enters but typically not at
all.
They participate in their CAPSTONES = .5 credit course + educationcents.org, key
train, work keys.
All students graduate with Concurrent Enrollment credit and/or work keys certified.
Rye, Pueblo West, Pueblo County:
Uses CiC at first for solely the Academic functions:
Courses, test scores, colleges
8th grade EXPLORE test
10th grade PLAN test
11th grade ACT
Pueblo West and Pueblo County did more interest inventory activities.
Districts are now looking at Naviance
Each room for ICAP has 1 teacher and 18-20 students
1 day a week = ICAP activities
Rye HS has 6 academies
When teachers are intentionally mentioning and talking about these academies
the students gain interest.
Counselor leads the students through building a Plan of Study and signing up for
academies.
Working towards becoming a CTE school.
FBLA and FFA are combining their efforts to supply community service projects
and speaking contests for their students. COOL!
Pueblo Community College:
Offered a Manufacturing Institute this past year for 7-8th graders on campus
Helpful because Manufacturing is an up-coming HOT career.
Great exposure to students
In STEM – they do service learning with college students + Elem/MS students
Welding instructor combined with Business
Supplies Real World application
Is excited to teach this way which makes the students excited
Agriculture instructor combined communication & writing in class for the PWR and
employability skills (+ a reality check!).