Career Development Guidelines for Northwest Prep Students
"Ninety percent of this year's kindergarten students will find themselves in jobs we know nothing about today." (J.D. Hoye)
Through a developmental and organized process during the students' Advisory periods, students acquire the skills necessary for success in the workplace and in life. Students will explore their interests, apply acquired skills and abilities, discover the many educational and occupational opportunities and options available, become aware of the educaton and training required for their career choice and begin to develop and manage their career pathway.
These guidelines will help students to:
Understand the relationship between educational achievement and career planning
- Understand the need for positive attitudes toward work and learning
- Acquire skills to locate, evaluate, and interpret career information
- Acquire skills to prepare to seek, obtain, maintain and change jobs
- Understand how societal needs and functions influence the nature and structure of work
The guidelines address three major competency areas that our students will be working on including: self-knowledge, educational and occupational exploration, and career planning. By the time the student graduates from high school, she or he should be able to formulate and bring into focus tentative career goals, select the appropriate academic and career/technical postsecondary options, and identify the levels of competence, certification and achievement necessary to reach her or his goals.
Mental Health and Career Development
The very traits that many employers look for in their employees are the traits observed and developed in adolescence that lead to more successful and satisfying life patterns. Researchers in the area of prevention and resiliency have observed that "there are human strengths that act as buffers against metnal illness: courage, future mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skills, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, and the capacity for flow and insight, to name several. Much of the task of prevention in this new century will be to create a science of human strength whose mission will be to understand and learn how to foster these virtues in young people".(Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000)