PLN Journal Week 6: Educating for Careers Conference and Career Resources

This weekend, I am grateful to be traveling with a group of teachers from my school and others in our district to attend the Educating for Careers 2016 Conference in Sacramento. The genesis for this trip goes back to last spring when an English teacher at my school reached out regarding potential collaboration around the launch of a Linked Learning Pathway in Health Science and Wellness.

Since I know that Teacher Librarians are not always considered to be eligible for all projects, I was pleased when my participation was warmly supported by our district's Career Technical Education office. I was able to engage in a week long professional development session this past summer, and I have continued to work with my school's Linked Learning team throughout this year.

From today through Tuesday, we are getting the chance to attend professional development sessions related to our career pathway programs, and after my first day, I have greater clarity around some state-hosted career resources.

In the session "Answering Who, Where, How with CalCRN Resources," led by John Merris-Coots from the California Department of Education, I got a detailed tour of a suite of web-based career resources available for free use in our schools. The main site, which is a good starting point for educators, is the California Career Resource Network. This landing page links to "Presentations" and "Lessons" that teachers may use and customize. In addition, this page serves as a directory for the resources below, which are geared more for student audiences:

• California Career Center - A virtual counselor resource with college and career resources, including links that John highlighted such as a print-ready Career Development Parent Guide translated into eight languages and a link to Jobs Made Real career videos 
• California CareerZone - A career exploration and planning website with self-assessments that direct students to learn more about related careers
• Career Surfer - A free mobile app with occupation snapshots that may help students browse and discover different types of jobs

This information may be helpful for our Linked Learning pathway, but it is really relevant for all of our students more generally as we work to meet an identified school goal of supporting our students with post-secondary options. One of my future hopes is to work more closely with our guidance department to ensure that the library program optimally complements their work with students related to these topics. Exploring these resources is definitely a good place to start!