In-Person Learning Experience with a Train-the-Trainer Program

Project Snapshot

My Process

I began by creating a detailed logic model

The Result

Follow me on a tour of the space, before and after the project.

Imagine Your Future Collage: This is where students visualize their futures and create a drawing or collage representing their future, professional selves. These are displayed prominently as a reminder of students' goals as they engage in the remaining career exploration activities. I worked with designers to create frames that accommodate rotating classes of students by making them changeable and creating drawing sheets that correspond to frame sizes. 

Throughout this tour, take a look at the furniture. All of the pieces are purposefully light and easy to move, modular and easily grouped together, and all of the writing surfaces are made of high quality white board material. These features make it possible for groups to gather in different parts of the space to focus on a particular activity and for convenient brainstorming and collaboration.  

What are your interests? The career exploration journey begins with something tangible and personal. This display facilitates learning of the six Holland Occupational Themes so that students can identify their top 2-3 interest themes. These interest themes act as a starting place for students to discover new careers that they are likely to enjoy and be successful in, and decreases the overwhelm of endless career choices. Students also learn about famous people, their careers, and their top interest themes to understand how different combinations of themes combine to influence a dynamic career.

Practice Essential Skills: Our research says that employers value essential skills, or soft skills, as much as technical skills and are more likely to take a chance on a candidate with essential skills. These are also skills that can be learned at any age and nurtured over time so it's a great fit for students in a middle school setting. A suite of age appropriate scenarios and other activities to practice these skills are included with the display.

Welcome Families: A layer of design for this space is for after school events for parents and other adults. Subject Matter Experts reported that local families are frequently unfamiliar with the local education systems and how the steps build to a career. This display outlines the step-by-step journey from middle school to career for families to stupport their students, and explains how they can support them each step of the way. This display is mobile and collapsible and designed to be easily stored.

Priority Sectors: On the left, the seven local thriving industries with that provide ample jobs that are growing and well paid. Students learn about each industry, the local businesses within them, and the types of jobs that exist. They also learn how these jobs are aligned with their own Holland Interest Themes to help them evaluate each job for personal fit. The goal is for students to create a more detailed vision of work that they can do once they have travelled through high school and postsecondary training.

Choosing a High School: On the right, a life sized compare-and-contrast activity to help students select a high school. Before this space was installed, most students did not make an intentional choice about which high school to attend despite the fact that their two local high schools provided vastly different pathways and opportunities that can lead to careers. For this activity, students select from a collection of circle icons representing programs at each school, like an engineering pathway or a health science pathway, and slide them into the open icon frame. Facilitators are tasked with helping them make choices connected to the priority sectors and their interest themes. Then students step back and compare their choices using real data.

Postsecondary Planning: After high school...more school! Surveys told us that local students are interested in getting their higher education in their home county,throughout the state of California, and in nearby Mexico and Arizona. This display represent the most sought after opportunities and provide QR codes for students to dive deeper into institutions that align with their interests and aspirations. The to-scale map was an important design feature to help students understand each institution's distance from home in a community that highly values familial closeness. 

A Snapshot of the Intallation Process

Snippet of the Space Launch Event