"A new effective and integrated approach to career and life planning, Career Choices and the anthology Possibilities give schools a head start on addressing the recommended SCANS competencies and foundation skills."

Gloria J. Conn
Member of the SCANS Commission

Below are a couple of sample activities from the Career Choices curriculum that demonstrate how the program meets the five competencies and the foundation skills of SCANS:

Career Choices, pages 238-241

Work maturity skills
Students, imagining themselves as the owner of a successful restaurant, conduct annual performance reviews for their employees. Participants become enthralled with the stories behind each employee. The discussions and debates, as the students evaluate and write performance objectives for each employee, are always lively. This activity offers a great opportunity to discuss the foundation skills in a real-world context as well as to practice the SCANS workplace competencies.

Possibilities, pages 279-283

Workplace exposure
After reading Linda Pastan's poem, "25th High School Reunion", the class forms a publishing company to produce a booklet for its 25th high school reunion. All students submit their "autobiographies" as they imagine their lives 25 years from now.
Job descriptions, mirroring those of a real-life publishing company, are given for each committee. Students get a unique opportunity to practice all the SCANS competencies and foundation skills as they create their motivational booklet. Committing their dreams to print has been shown to have an powerful effect on future life plans.

Lifestyle Math, pages 98-99

The value of team work
Producing a graph that illustrates the value of math education not only visually demonstrates the importance of math, but also emphasizes the role a good math background plays in future happiness and success. Job descriptions for the team developing the graph are outlined using the five SCANS workplace competencies.