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Frequently Asked Questions

How is a Freshman Transition course different than a career exploration course?

A comprehensive guidance curriculum based on the Course Standards for Freshman Transition Classes culminates with the student developing a meaningful 10-year plan.

Essential to a course that is based on The George Washington University’s Course Standards for Freshman Transition Classes, is the development of a meaningful 10-year career and education plan leading to a productive adult life. Through the process facilitated by the Standards, students are stretched to envision a future that includes:

Graduation from high school
Matriculation and graduation from college or post-secondary education and training
Transition into the workforce with the training and skills necessary for economic self-sufficiency.

Once students complete this process and have articulated their dreams and personal, career and lifestyle goals in this quantitative way, school retention rates will soar (both high school and college). When the acquisition of education becomes relevant to their future life satisfaction, students will exert the effort required for the rigorous coursework required to thrive in the 21st century.

A Comprehensive Guidance Course (CGC) goes beyond online career exploration programs in the following ways:

Online career exploration tools only meet a percentage of the Course Standards for Freshman Transition Classes.

If a school’s goal for its Freshman Transition course is to increase school retention and academic achievement, then a course based on the Freshman Transition Standards is crucial. An online career exploration program corresponds to a portion of what needs to be accomplished. It meets a part of the standards, but not all.

While career exploration is an important subset of a comprehensive guidance course (CGC), a CGC is so much more. In addition, a CGC must help students:

Learn to project into the future and understand the consequences of today’s choices and actions.
Understand how to match academic and educational effort to lifestyle expectations.
Become identity-achieved through contemplation and self-discovery.
Learn and practice the communication, interpersonal and self-management skills necessary to succeed in today’s educational and workforce settings.
Identify and plan for the challenges and stumbling blocks that are inevitable in today’s fast-pace, competitive world.
Analyze quantitatively, what economic self–sufficiency equals for them.
Become proactive, rather than reactive, in managing the change situations in their lives.

Besides traditional career exploration topics, a Comprehensive Guidance Course helps young people understand the challenges and the benefits of a consciously-planned career path. Armed with this information, they are far more likely to persevere when they hit life’s speed bumps.”

Copied with permission from the George Washington University Freshman Transition website:
www.freshmantransition.org

Course Overview:
For a course meeting the Freshman Transition Standards

To meet the requirements of these emerging adults, a Freshman Transition course must address a combination of personal/social, educational and career-and-life skills. In short, the course work must:
PERSONAL/SOCIAL
Help Students envision a future that is productive, achievable, and stimulating. Provide the framework for helping students learn to project into the future and understand the consequences of today’s choices and actions. Expose students to potential stumbling blocks that could impede their success and help them develop the necessary coping skills and attitudes required for a productive transition into adulthood. Help students become identity-achieved, a necessary developmental process for all adolescents, but particularly necessary for youth at risk of becoming teen parents, substance abusers or dropouts. Provide practice in the communication and interpersonal skills required for career and personal success.
EDUCATION

Facilitate students’ recognition of the value of education and the importance of becoming internally motivated to succeed in school.

Motivate learners and workers who challenge themselves and strive for higher achievement.

Help students understand how education, training, and career choice impact their personal lifestyle.

Raise academic achievement because students apply themselves once they understand how core subjects (e.g., reading, writing, speaking, computing) impact their future success.

CAREER AND LIFE SKILLS

Teach a life and career planning “process” so students can continually adjust their plans throughout their education and adult life.

Help students become “career focused” so every student is prepared to enter the workforce upon completion of their education.

Facilitate the development of a personalized ten-year plan that matches each student’s career aspirations and commitment to education.

Teach students the skills, aptitudes, and attitudes needed to successfully transition into high school, post-secondary education and/or training, the workforce, and adulthood.

How is a comprehensive guidance course different than a career exploration course?

Helping students become career focused and career committed.

A key goal of a comprehensive guidance curriculum such as the Career Choices curriculum is helping students become career-focused and career-committed, while learning how to make effective decisions about their futures.

Becoming career focused and career committed doesn’t mean they necessarily know what career they want to pursue but, more important, they understand WHY they need to prepare for a career at all. They understand how their educational effort today impacts their future happiness. Because of classroom exploration and discussion topics in the comprehensive guidance course, they clearly recognize the consequences of not getting a good education. They can quantify and articulate a detailed vision of a productive, self-sufficient adulthood, not only as it relates to career plans, but also to plans associated with lifestyle, financial goals, personal satisfaction and identity issues. Once students understand the “why,” then school becomes suddenly relevant. Grades increase and dropout rates decline.

For high school students it is the learning “the process,” rather than focusing on the end result, that counts.

Becoming career-focused and career-committed doesn’t mean that students are choosing the career of their adult life. Instead, they are learning an important decision-making process by pondering and answering the questions: who am I, what do I want, and how do I get it. This is an explicit process they will use throughout their lives with all major decisions they face. Knowing this process in a step-by-step sequence will expose young people to sophisticated techniques and strategies not normally experienced at such a young age.

Becoming career-focused and career-committed requires that the students evaluate a number of issues beyond basic career exploration topics covered in computer- based programs: topics such as learning about what motivates them, their future lifestyle goals, the cost of living and the consequences of not getting a first-rate education.

Why 10 years? Isn’t four-or five-years enough? Our school has each student complete a four year graduation plan.

It’s important that young people be able to envision—and then plan for—a productive future as a self-sufficient adult. A four-year plan gets them through high school graduation (perhaps…but not those who don’t understand the value of education). A five- year plan may get them into college but, as we all know, the dropout rate in college is 50%. Therefore, a 10-year plan is needed to take them through school, training and into the workforce with the understanding of what it takes to become financially responsible for themselves and their future families. Once students have a quantitative plan and vision of a productive future, they understand the consequences of dropping out.

Is it really possible to get the average 14-year old to write a comprehensive 10-year plan for their futures?

Absolutely. When taught in sequence, Career Choices leads students through a step-by-step process (up to 100 active-learning exercises) that enables them to articulate who they are and what they want their lives to look like after high school. Each of the activities builds on the ones before so that when documented in the Workbook and Portfolio, students can easily compile their plan and store it online with the optional My10yearPlan.com® to review, modify or update later throughout their high school career.

Dropout Prevention is our key goal for our Freshman Transition course. How can we assure the best results?

It is important to note for any of the Career Choices course model you choose, to achieve the dropout prevention results you desire you’ll need to:

Devote at least 70 hours of course time to the content and course materials of Career Choices main text.
Complete the Career Choices text in sequence culminating with every student writing a quantitative 10-year plan (chapter 12). Do not jump around in the text, because you are also teaching a valuable life and career decision-making process.
Choose instructors who are enthusiastic about the project and course materials and want to teach 8th or 9th graders.

Most of our students are going to college. Why would they need a course like this?

Fifty percent of students drop out of college or do not graduate within six years. That statistic alone should convince you. In addition, studies of college students show that students who are career-focused and career-committed are far more likely to graduate from college and transitio n into the workforce at the level their college education prepared them for. Today, 20% of 26-year olds live at home or are not economically independent of their parents. Addressing the issue as it relates to economic self-sufficiency requires students understand the necessity for a career focus.

How do we convince parents of the necessity of this type of course for their teenagers? It’s an all too common refrain: “My student doesn’t need this. They are going to college!”

In the United States, young adults mentioned above who require economic support from their parents (past their schooling years) are known as Twixters. (See Time Magazine, January 24, 2004). In Great Britain they are known as KIPPERS. This as an acronym for:

Kids In Parents Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings

Next time you are with a group of parents who might question the importance of this type of class, ask how many of them know families whose adult children returned home after gradating from college because they couldn’t find a job that would support them. Watch the hands go up and the heads nod!

How can we access the results of our Career Choices course?

Besides measuring your school data for dropout, attendance, suspension, and expulsion rates, along with the increase in student academic achievement scores and grades, we suggest you measure each student’s attitude at the beginning and the end of the course as it relates to how they value education and their own plans for getting a good education. Without a positive attitude and an understanding of the value of education in their lives, students will not strive for achievement and will dropout (either physically or mentally).

We suggest you use the Career Choices pre- and post-survey, found on pages 6/12 to 6/15 of the Instructor’s Guide for Career Choices. An online scoring tool is available through The Teachers' Lounge for assessment of these surveys.

What goals should we set for our efforts? If you and your school make the commitment to a Freshman Transition course that:

Uses the Career Choices curriculum as the basis of that course (minimum 70 hours of content from the text),
Is taught by qualified and enthusiastic instructors
Requires all students complete the course work in sequence through Chapter 12
Culminates with students writing a meaningful quantitative 10-year plan

Conservatively, you should more than cut in half your current dropout rates along with substantial increases in academic achievement for your students who complete Career Choices and their 10 year plan. A motivated student will be a good student.

What do you recommend as a timeline for the launch of a Freshman Transition course, using Career Choices?

Because so much of the planning has been done for you and your team, the Career Choices curriculum can be launched by a dedicated and enthusiastic core of educators in a very short time. This “turn-key” curriculum is comprehensive, yet easy to implement and use.

SAMPLE TIMELINE:

For a year-long, 180 hour class that begins the first day of class of the school year 2007-2008:

Month one and two (July and August):

Professional development that might include:

Working with the curriculum support department of Academic Innovations to identify the appropriate day-by-day lesson plan in EXCEL that matches your school’s model.
Course instructors attend a two-day Career Choices workshop (one will be held in Louisiana in late August or early September). Or you can contract for a certified Career Choices trainer to come to your school site and provide training for not only the course instructors but in addition all teachers for the school-wide initiative strategies outlined in the NASSP article.
Principal, and school leaders and administrators attend a professional development Freshman Transition Leadership Institute to learn about the execution of the 10-Step Plan from George Washington University.
Course instructors meet to finalize the day-by-day lesson plan on EXCEL. Provide three days of meeting/planning time prior to the start of school.
Send a letter to student’s parents about the new course.

First day of school year

Launch course on first day of classes.
Students take the pre-survey provided in the Instructor’s Guide on pages 6/12 to 6/15 either online if using My10yearplan.com® or with paper and pencil.

First Semester

Day-to-day execution of the course, following the lesson plans.
Teachers of the course have a daily common prep time, for planning, development, comparison of notes and strategizing for particular student interventions.
If a certified trainer is used for onsite training, have that expert back to the school for a site visitation and technical assistance.

Second Semester

Day-to-day execution of the course, following the lesson plans being sure to finish the course and the students complete their 10-year plan in Chapter 12 before the end of the school year.
After Chapter 7, students spend time at computer lab on Louisiana’s E-portal web site.
At the end of the course, students spend three days in computer lab, inputting the data from their Workbooks/Portfolios into M10yearplan.com.
If a certified trainer is used for onsite training, have that expert back to the school for a site visitation and technical assistance.
At the end of the school year, students will conduct a one-day retreat for their parent(s) similar to the one outlined in the Instructor’s Guide on page 10/7 to 10/11.
End of course: Students take the post-survey provided in the Instructor’s Guide on pages 6/12 to 6/15 (either online if using My10yearplan.com® or with paper and pencil).

Assessment
At the end of the school year, data from the pre- and post-surveys, along with surveys completed by instructors of the course, counselors, parents and administrators will be compiled and submitted to an independent evaluation source for a report on the success of the program. Based upon that report, adjustments will be made for the coming school year.

What follow-up strategies do we need once our freshmen complete a Career Choices course? How do we keep the momentum going as sophomores, juniors and seniors?

Reinforce the lessons learned throughout high school To maintain the momentum started by a course involving Career Choices, it is important that students
revisit and revise their 10-year plans (chapter 12 of Career Choices) throughout their sophomore, junior and senior years. The more students are asked to rethink and rework their plans, the more meaningful the plans will be and the more comfortable the students will become with making decisions that involve change—which in itself is a crucial survival skill in the workforce of the 21st century.

When career stability is no longer assured for the vast majority of jobs because of changing industries, globalization and technological advancements, knowing how to navigate the ever-changing world of work is crucial. Those who fail to adapt to this new workforce reality could be condemned to a life of subsistence living.

And for those students who might be considering dropping out (or not performing to their greatest capacity) this constant reminder of the consequences will keep them in school. This can be accomplished by using My10yearPlan.com®. This advisory online tool will help you accomplish this important function. For more information, visit My10yearPlan.com®.

It is important for all stakeholders to have access to student’s plans, so they can provide support. Does Career Choices offer this option?

According to recent studies, one of the most promising high school reform models is advisory programs and efforts, the personalization of education. With My10yearPlan.com®, school-wide comprehensive guidance is now possible. This digital tool allows students, teachers, counselors, administrators and parents to easily track and provide support for students’ individualized, career inclusive education plans. This is the gold-standard of personalization.

Advisory Options using My10yearPlan.com®
Every teacher and administrator is then able to access this summary of each student’s 10-year plan. What once would’ve taken 20-30 minutes to gather by reading through a student’s workbook/portfolio is now possible in seconds. Anyone (with the necessary passwords) can gain a thorough sense of a student’s goals and ambitions by quickly calling up a student’s plan online and reviewing the 10-year plan summary. The accessibility of this information makes qualitative counseling and academic support easier to provide.

Updating Strategies for My10yearPlan.com®
Finally, students are given the opportunity during the course of their sophomore, junior and senior years to update and revise their online plans once they’ve reassessed their goals. We recommend that one academic department commit to taking the responsibility each year to facilitate the process so students update their plans.

My10yearPlan.com® can provide data-driven information about each student’s future plans that is quick and easy to access. For advisory situations to function at the highest level, teachers, counselors and advisors need quantitative information about each student, as it relates to their educational and career goals. The best guidance is provided when working from specific examples, rather than general or vague notions. If advice and mentoring is built on each student’s identifiable goals and lifestyle expectations, it will have more meaning. By having this information online, all stake holders can quickly access this in-depth information so individual guidance can be provided easily.

As articulated in the November 2005 issue of Principal Leadership Magazine, in order for a standards-based comprehensive guidance course like Career Choices to impact the most students, the 10-year plans need to be readily available to all teachers so that each academic department can provide opportunities for students to rework their plans. Examples of this include:

A 10th-grade social studies department could work with its students to reassess their 10-year plans once they study the workforce globalization issues of today.
An 11th-grade English department can facilitate the annual re-editing of the plans once the students read a literary works in which a character struggles with his or her own life-planning issues.
As part of a senior independent study, students could update their 10-year plans to use in college or employment interviews. Or students could chose a service learning project in the career area of interest they have identified in their current version of their plan

Our school uses a software (or online) tool for helping students choose a career. Isn’t that enough?

For the top 20-30 percent of your students, perhaps. For those students who probably receive this information and exploration at home or observe it within their families, a couple of hours with a software program might be enough. But for the balance of your students, the ones who do not see the relevance in education and cannot envision a productive future with plans to realize their dreams, a couple hours behind a computer screen is just not enough to set them on the path to the second most important decision of their lives…how they’ll spend 40 hours per week for 40 years. Without an understanding of why they need to prepare vigorously for a career, you’ll loose them.

In addition, it is important for ALL students to have the skills and information necessary so they can change direction when they are forced to or want to change careers. If they learn the process using real world applications for research and decision-making so readily available on such U.S. Department of Labor sponsored websites (rather than relying on software programs that are unavailable once they graduate), they’ll have the confidence to plot their own productive work-life course. They’ll be empowered with the skills to manage their own career trajectory after they leave school and will not have to rely on commercial online tools that “magically” come up with career options or directions once a survey is completed.

I’d like to brainstorm with an expert the development of our dropout prevention course model. Who should I speak with?

Contact Tanja Easson, Vice President of Curriculum Support, at Academic Innovations. (800) 967-8016, ext 307, or email Tanja Easson. Tanja has been with Academic Innovations for more than 10 years and has worked with hundreds of schools and districts across the United States. She can speak authoritatively about strategies the work (and those that don’t!). She is also responsible for the professional development opportunities for the curriculum and can provide guidance and help you tailor your efforts.

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