Maybe you have heard of Career Choices; or Academic Innovations; as well as Get Focused, Stay Focused; and you are not sure how all of these pieces fit together––so here is the explanation:
Get Focused, Stay Focused is a classroom-based, comprehensive guidance curriculum designed to increase middle school transition; high school, college, and post-secondary completion; and propel successful entry into the workforce with the skills required to succeed.
Usually, the students “Get Focused” in 9th grade (or in their first semester in college) using the Career Choices curriculum. This is when they learn career exploration and planning and build their 10-year career and education plans. From 10th–12th grade, the students “Stay Focused” with follow-up modules allowing them to explore STEM careers, high-wage, high-demand careers, and post-secondary education and training options. Each year, they revise their 10-year plans as they get closer to knowing what they want to do in their futures. In other words, they go from a dream, to a direction, to a destination.
In the 2020–21 school year, more than 500 high schools in California and over 200,000 students were enrolled in Get Focused, Stay Focused, and 45 California community colleges partnered with their surrounding school districts for early college credit.
We are a 501c3 non-profit in a public/private partnership with Academic Innovations, the publisher of the Career Choices curriculum series. We work with our partner schools and colleges that use the Career Choices series to support high quality delivery of curriculum and ensure that EVERY student graduates with an informed career choice and up-to-date 10-year plan.
We also provide a variety of implementation support to schools, such as executive coaching for new teachers––many of whom have no background in career development curriculum and welcome the opportunity to join professional learning communities with their peers to share ideas and learn from each other as they begin to teach the class.
Finally, we offer technical support and professional development as outlined in the article found in this newsletter entitled “New Services from the GFSF Non-Profit.”
As students return to school in the shadow of the pandemic, we need to help get them back on track. Studies show that students are suffering from depression, lack of focus, and loss of learning. We need to give them time to think about their futures and update their plans, providing them with information on local high-wage, high-demand jobs so that they can make informed career choices. Our low-income students of color have been disproportionately impacted by the disruption of their learning, and we need to build their self-efficacy––the belief that they can move ahead with their plans and be successful in their chosen careers.
In the last year, therefore, the GFSF non-profit developed three new areas of service to support our partner schools:
Scaling to the Whole-School Initiative
The Building a Bridge to Your Future middle school workbook also integrates key tenets from social and emotional learning and infuses SEL into focused career awareness and exploration activities. This combination helps students develop the skills and motivation needed to succeed in high school, college or post-secondary training, and a career.
Embedding Regional Labor Market Information
In the Career Choices & Changes curriculum, students learn how to research different careers using a national career website from the Department of Labor. However, the website gives national or state-level data, and students cannot easily find out what high-wage, high-demand jobs exist close to them. In partnership with local community colleges and employers, the GFSF team coordinates roundtable events for educators, counselors, and administrators from K12 to hear from their partners about college programs and subsequent careers and to hear directly from business and industry about their needs and what they are looking for in new hires. These regional events provide schools with presentation materials and labor market data to embed in their classes.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Career Planning
Often, the barrier to students achieving their career goals is not their lack of capabilities but their negative or faulty beliefs about themselves. The Career Choices and Changes curriculum is rich in opportunities to launch discussions with students about overcoming barriers, staying positive and motivated, and perseverance. However, educators may need some support in helping students identify strategies to push back on their limiting beliefs. The GFSF non-profit provides a new 2-hour workshop on how diversity, equity, and inclusion impact student career thinking and decision making with ideas and strategies to help educators better support students. A crosswalk of the curriculum is shared, pinpointing opportunities for DEI discussions, and additional DEI activities and resources are provided for educators to embed in classes.
These three new areas of service are offered to schools as fee-for-service packages. They are built into grant proposals, and your donations provide these supports to schools, educators, and students.
On October 1, 2021, Get Focused Stay Focused hosted a fun virtual Trivia Night fundraiser. Sixteen teams signed up with seventy-two people participating in total. One local team met in person for a pizza party while playing. Other players joined family members or friends living in other states to play as an online team.
Our quizmaster for the evening, Tim Duggan, did an awesome job moderating the evening. There were four rounds of questions with twelve questions per round. Team players went into breakout rooms to discuss their answers and sent their results back to Tim for scoring. He announced the correct answers and team statuses after each round. The questions covered diverse topics such as food, famous people, geography, music, sports, art, authors, state capitals, and more.
Amazon Gift Cards were awarded to each of the six players on the winning team. The first-place winning team was LORT. Congratulations!
GFSF raised about $11,000 to enhance our career-focused program for high school students. A great time was had by all, and Trivia Night was such a huge success, we plan to make it an annual event.
Linda Schwartz
Chairperson of GFSF Trivia Night
Our New President - Celia Howen
Celia was voted in as the new GFSF Board President in August 2021 after serving 10 months on the Board. She has spent 20 years empowering college students for lives of purpose, service, and leadership by providing professional development coaching, general workplace skills, work-related values, and industry specific internship and job search support. Celia has had a leadership role in directing a college career center’s staff, resources, and partnerships across campus. Today, Celia is practicing as a Personal and Professional Development Consultant working with individual clients as well as providing team-building workshops for churches, non-profits, and for-profit companies. Celia holds an M.Ed in Higher Education and College Counseling. She chose to join the GFSF Board because the organization’s work is in line with her previous and current work, her values, and her passion to help students make important decisions about their futures.
Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 20th for an opportunity
to grab some great bargains. GFSF is having a giant garage sale
from 8:00–12:00 (no early birds, please). Cancelled if raining!
You'll find treasures such as:
For more information, contact Linda Schwartz at LESatTLW@aol.com
or call (805) 689-4222.
100% of the money raised at the garage sale will go to help support
the ongoing programs and goals of Get Focused Stay Focused.
See you on November 20th!