Career Day and College Day (Atlanta Summit Conference recap)

If you got a link of this post, it means that you attended my session at the Atlanta Summit. (http://www.innovativecounselors.com) If you didn’t attend and you are just checking out my site, WELCOME! For anyone reading this… hola and bonjour to this site which is brand spanking new. I am branching out and it is overwhelming and super cool all at once. I thought that this venue would be an easy place for me to post some of the things I presented at conference. Since I told those in attendance I would provide digital handouts, this seems like a good place to post them. Let me know if you have any questions.

Here are some some ideas from that presentation.

If you are interested in creating a College Day and/or Career Day, first you should:

1. Present to your administration ideas of how to integrate college and career readiness into your culture. (Please see the ppt in the College Day book (click title to order) for a ready-to-go PowerPoint to present to them. Apologies about not being able to post it here due to copyright).

2. Set a date for Career Day and College Day on your master calendar. At my school we do 2 separate days, but many school do a  one day Career/College Day. We choose a day in May to do College Day, so that college students are home and can more readily participate in being present on our campus that day.

3. During your open house for parents, have a sign up available in classrooms so that parents can sign up if they are interested in being contacted to speak during each of these events.

Career Day specific Ideas:

• You can set up how your Career Day program in many different ways. At my school we have Career on Wheels for K-3rd grade and Round Robin of Speakers for grades 4 and 5 (see above).
• Have a guessing game of “Who Did This Student Grow Up to be?”. Ask staff members to bring in photos of themselves when they were in elementary school. Scan the photos and have students (and staff) guess which staff members they are. This is fun (and simultaneously embarrassing) for all!
• Have worksheets and books available to teachers to supplement career awareness ideas. A biblio list is here to help.
• Create Career Centers. I create 4 centers that are 5 minutes each. I ring a bell after 5 minutes and have the groups switch centers. This is an interactive lesson and the kids always want to come back for more curriculum-based centers (contact me for more info on this).
• Chapter 9 of Making the Link is dedicated to setting up a Career Day. Check it out!

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College Day specific ideas:

• Get staff excited! Have a Tailgating Themed Staff meeting to introduce the idea of College Day. Serve some great snacks, and school appropriate beverages (darn!) 🙂
• Invite parents, aunts/uncles, and relatives to come eat lunch with their kids on College Day and wear there college gear.
• Display a “We Went to College and So Can You!” map with where staff members went to college.
• Have College Day speakers come to classes and offer different perspectives of post-secondary education.
• Have different puppets and characters be your “college dude” to come to lessons or sit in the hallway.