Proposal Writing Aid for WIA Youth Program Administrators

Overview

This comprehensive guide is designed to assist project administrators and service training providers develop proposals for youth activities funded by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). The guide describes how the Career Choices materials meet the requirements of the WIA legislation by offering basic skills instruction (reading, writing and math) while establishing job readiness and career planning skills.

Meeting the Challenges

WIA legislation has established rigorous requirements for youth activities. It is clear that Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs), Youth Councils and Training Providers are asked to establish an improved system of program design. Planning and implementation of programs involves longer-term commitments, and improved outcomes. We help you meet these challenges. Whether you serve in-school, out-of-school, or youth opportunities grant programs, Career Choices helps you address the core principle of your service strategy: assisting young people to achieve academic and employment success as they transition into adulthood, careers or future education.

Program Success

Since 1993, 957 individual JTPA programs, serving more than 85,000 youth have used the Career Choices materials. The texts are the most widely used curriculum materials in the U.S. for Academic Enrichment in summer youth programs. In addition, they are in year round use in over 3,700 schools across the country. The US Department of Labor has recognized Career Choices as a "Best Practice," emphasizing the integration of academics with career planning, work maturity and life skills.

WIA Requirements and Program Elements

Met by Career Choices

Under Chapter 4, Youth Activities Section 129: Use of Funds for Youth Activities, the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 specifies a framework for delivering youth programs. This section of the Act outlines specific requirements and program design elements that must become part of youth activities. The following descriptions demonstrate how Career Choices meets the Act's requirements:

Preparation for Post Secondary Educational Opportunities

Career Choices addresses this requirement in three ways. (1) Since many of the target at-risk youth are deficient in basic skills, the curriculum offers a motivational program of remediation, using two academic competency-based supplements - Possibilities, a literature anthology, and Lifestyle Math, an applied math workbook. Used thematically with Career Choices, youth improve the basic skills in a relevant and inspirational context. (2) The reinforcing message of Career Choices is that education is the pathway to self-sufficiency through a successful career. This message is delivered to the students by demonstrating the practical benefits of staying in school and becoming life-long learners. (3) The exercises in Career Choices lead to the creation of a 10-year plan, including post secondary education related to the individual's career vision.

Strong Linkage between Academic and Occupational Learning

First, occupational learning must include the exploration and selection of a career that matches the individual's talents and traits. Those career exploration skills are critical to survival in the ever-changing workplace of the 21st century. Career Choices provides the linkage to academics with Possibilities and Lifestyle Math. Together, these texts offer workplace readiness activities that give young people the proven formulas and skills for finding the right career, getting a job and keeping that job.

Preparation for Unsubsidized Employment

Career Choices offers a strong pre-employment, work maturity component. It empowers a young person to feel confident in venturing out for job interviews, job shadowing or internships. Contextualized activities give youth the opportunity to practice necessary interpersonal skills in a safe environment. Career Choices also focuses on decision-making, goal-setting and avoiding roadblocks to success.

Effective Linkages with Intermediaries with Links to Jobs

Career Choices is designed to show young people the many linkage opportunities available to take personal charge of their career path. An important feature of the Career Choices curriculum is its Internet component. Over 70 web sites are available - giving students a chance to discover a complete array of job descriptions, career and educational opportunities.

Instruction Leading to Drop-out Prevention

This curriculum tackles the root causes of dropping out. It develops persuasive arguments for young people to stay in school. Throughout Career Choices, exercises and activities focus on the reasons and benefits of learning. Students literally "do the math" on staying in school. This reinforcement is designed to change attitudes. When young people are given sound reasons to think positively about their future, their attitude toward school changes, and they begin to plan for the long-term, often for the first time in their lives.

Alternative Secondary Schools

Career Choices is already a recognized curriculum for career exploration in secondary schools. Over 3,500 high schools have used the texts with great success, particularly for at-risk students. Career Choices offers a non-traditional structure built on the concept of relevant and interactive learning. This approach is far more appealing to at-risk youth or to an alternative school setting than the lecture format. The curriculum offers a major opportunity to provide academic credit (language arts and basic math) while meeting the Act's requirements. Academic credit offers program managers a very real non-monetary incentive for youth.

Summer Employment Opportunities

Career Choices has proven its value and success during the past seven years as an academic enrichment component for summer youth. It has three main advantages over other curricula. (1) It is flexible. It can be implemented effectively in classroom settings or on job sites in as little as 30 hours but can be expanded to as many as 90 hours. (2) It offers the necessary pre-employment activities to help young people succeed on the job(3) It offers an opportunity to link the summer program to year-round activities via the young person's personalized education and career plan.

Paid and Unpaid Work Experience

Before young people can successfully participate in paid work experience, job shadowing or internships, they must develop basic work maturity skills. Career Choices provides the motivational classroom activities that prepare youth to meet employers' expectations. The student who completes Career Choices is ready to interview, prepare a resume and follow up to get a job - skills they will use many times throughout life.

Occupational Skill Training

Perhaps one of the most important occupation skills needed in the 21st century is personal career development. The DOL predicts young people will change jobs, even careers, seven times on average in a lifetime. Today's workplace demands that people have the skills to manage their careers as well as do specific jobs.

Leadership Development Opportunities

Leadership development is a key objective of Career Choices. Woven through the text are activities on decision making, personal budgeting, positive work and social behavior. These activities help develop the young person's positive attitude and work maturity. Additionally, there are exercises to help young people work successfully in teams, set goals and priorities.

Follow-up Services for not less than 12 Months

The new federal legislation mandates more intensive services for eligible youth, including follow-up. Career Choices can become either a viable bridge between programs or a long-term learning experience in itself. Part of the student's Workbook is a portfolio component. This document personalizes the young person's plan and can be "carried" to a guidance/career counselor, case manager or adult mentor. The portfolio is the starting point f a pathway to a rewarding future - if you know where you're going - you have a better chance getting there. When young people commit their dreams to paper, caring adults can more easily support their visions. At the same time, more interest and enthusiasm on the part of youth in their long-term career path will lead to successful advancement to higher education or advanced training, increased job retention, and intermediate-term salary gains.

Comprehensive Guidance

Clearly Career Choices presents an opportunity for young people to work toward a comprehensive career plan. In 100 exercises students explore who they are, what they want and how they can get it. In a final planning exercise students define their educational and career goals. By this point, they are motivated to develop a plan that includes staying in school. Educators and students alike speak about the turning point at which young people who have gone through this process come to see the value and benefits of education and the need to take charge of their lives. These are important breakthroughs for most young people.

Descriptions of Each Text

The Career Choices integrated curriculum consists of three textbooks, a Workbook and Instructor's Guide. The texts can be used independently or jointly to create an interdisciplinary learning experience.

Career Choices is the main text, complete with over 100 motivational learning activities. Students begin with a process for self-awareness. Once they explore their unique abilities, ambitions and dreams, they are ready to learn the life skill strategies of goal setting, decision making, critical thinking, teamwork and long-term planning.

Possibilities is a literature anthology of fifty poems, short stories, essays and speeches integrated thematically with the lessons in Career Choices. Literature's true gift is to help students broaden understanding of self and others. The selections in Possibilities help young people relate these lessons directly to their own lives while increasing reading skills.

Lifestyle Math complements the Career Choices text as it teaches students real-world math skills they will use virtually every day of their lives. Students explore the financial costs of their ideal family at age 29. In this dramatic lesson, they discover not only the personal budget process but understand why they need career planning and education to achieve their lifestyle goals.

The Workbook and Portfolio provides a permanent record of each student's career and life planning goals. This low-cost, consumable workbook replicates each exercise in the Career Choices classroom text. With this portfolio, students gain focus, teachers acquire an assessment tool and guidance counselors can work with a tangible student career plan.

The Instructor's and Counselor's Guideprovides instructors with clearly written learning objectives, lesson plans, motivational activities, vocabulary and composition suggestions.

The Lesson Planning Guide and Hourly Manager provides hour by hour guidance to help tailor the curriculum to virtually any summer educational enhancement objectives.

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