By establishing career and educational pathways in your ESL classroom, you will empower your students to develop roadmaps of the steps they need to take to achieve their long-term goals.
Many students do not know much about the types of careers that exist, which ones would be a good fit for their personalities or skill sets, and how to get the education needed to pursue such careers. Incorporating pathway work into your everyday instruction will enable you set your students on a path for success.
In order to create a pathways-driven classroom, you first need to help students identify their career area of interest. Once students have selected a career, they can then identify the educational training they will need in order to pursue the career. For some students, it may be a GED or advanced certificate. For others, it may be an applied baccalaureate degree. Regardless of your students’ diverse interests, you can unify your classroom by encouraging each student to create a pathways portfolio to chart their career and educational plans.
Cambridge University Press’ Ventures Career and Educational Pathways is designed to help you introduce pathways into your classroom. The worksheet-based series can be used as a standalone program or as a supplement to the Ventures, All-Star, or Excellent English series. The worksheets are an excellent basis for your students to develop their career and education portfolio.
Utilizing Career Interest Inventories
The first step to introducing career pathways into your classroom is to have your students identify a career of interest. They can do so by taking one or more career interest inventories. Literacy-level learners can begin with simple visual charts introducing key career areas. Intermediate learners can explore careers that are a good fit for their personality. Advanced learners can explore career clusters and take free career inventories online such as the Holland Code RIASEC test.
Researching a Career
Once students have filled out an inventory and identified a career of interest, they can then focus on learning more about the career. You can help your students explore local workforce-driven opportunities through online job boards. Other tools like the Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook enable students to learn more about their career of interest such as the average hourly wage, on-the-job training opportunities, predicted demand and industry growth, and required education.
Pursuing Higher Education
When students have identified the education required to pursue their career of interest, they then need to focus on transitioning into a college or university setting in order to obtain the requisite certificate, license or degree. You may want to bring in brochures for local colleges and universities or, if you have access to a computer lab, encourage students to explore school websites online.
Teach your students about bridge programs to help them feel more confortable with the idea of transitioning from an ESL classroom into a standard college course. In order to help students prepare to undertake their educational pathway, it’s useful to cover topics such as financial aid, admission requirements, and following an application checklist. Encourage your students to visit nearby campuses, meet with admissions officers, and conduct informational interviews about their program of interest before choosing a specific college or university.
Getting Experience and Making Contacts
You may also want to introduce your students to the concept of internships, apprenticeships, and volunteer work as another way for them to explore a possible career, develop work-related skills, and make professional contacts. Encourage your students to network in their industry of interest and conduct informational interviews or set up job shadowing with the contacts they make.
Incorporating other career-related lessons in your classroom such as having your students develop a resume, role-play a job interview, and practice accepting a job offer are other great ways to prepare students for the real-life situations they will encounter along their career path.
By incorporating career and educational pathway work into your classroom, you will inspire your students to take a path they might not have otherwise known was possible. I’d love to hear any comments or suggestions you have for other pathways-related activities below.