Virtual Career Day

Probably the most commonly asked question to elementary and secondary students alike is “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember being asked this question frequently between the ages of 6-18 years old. It is important, even at a young age, to be thinking about your future dreams and goals. One must keep the end goal in mind to achieve their dreams and aspirations and to understand the importance of school, academics and education. Having a career day is a fun and interactive way to introduce students to new and different jobs they may not have heard about or been familiar with prior. It opens doors for students and gets them thinking about their future career path and how to get there.

I spent a lot of time researching how to plan an effective career day and the various benefits of having a career day for elementary school students. Below are the websites and articles that I found most helpful throughout my planning process. Through reflection and research, I was able to plan and implement a career day that was beneficial, fun and interactive for all of my first-grade students. My class was thrilled to invite guests into our virtual classroom and enjoyed meeting and interacting with the participants. My hope is for the continued conversations around job and professional aspirations to not stop after career day, but rather continue throughout their entire educational career. It is so important that students have a large support system to help guide them along the right path. My hope is to continue to invite our career day participants back into our classroom, to continue to build strong relationships with professionals within the Memphis community and to ensure the students in my first-grade class have strong advocates who will help them be successful in the world outside of school.

My overall learning goal for our career week and career day is to introduce students to people living in our local community who have a variety of different jobs and took various paths to get to where they are today.

Additionally, I want students to engage with adults and topics beyond the first-grade curriculum. The first-grade curriculum spends a majority of the year focusing on concepts related to math, reading, comprehension and science. Rarely does our curriculum focus on outside topics such as goal setting and career planning. I believe these two concepts are just as important to discuss as math, reading, comprehension and science.

My goal is to introduce students to a variety of Memphis professionals from a variety of different cultural backgrounds. I want students to be able to see themselves within our guests and see their future as something they can attain when they set their mind to it, plan accordingly, and set goals for both their academic and personal life. My hope is to begin to spark conversations and ideas within students around what they want to be when they grow up and what they will need to accomplish academically to achieve their goals.

The career week will take place over four days and conclude with our first-grade career day where we will invite guests from the Memphis community into our classroom to teach and inform us about a variety of different careers and career paths. Throughout the unit, students will engage with different texts and learn about what a career day looks like. At the beginning of each day, during our morning meeting block, the teacher will read a book to the class and have students engage in dialogue around the new topics they learned. Students will further their knowledge about a variety of different careers and begin thinking about what they would like to be when they grow up. On the second day of career week, students will reflect on the book, The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola, and complete a reflection answering the question “what would you like to be when you grow up?”

This unit is aligned to the speaking and listening, and writing common core state standards. Students will participate in collaborative conversations about topics related to careers and job aspirations. Students will ask and answer questions about information presented orally on career day. Lastly, students will engage in writing opportunities to express their goals around what they would like to be when they grow up. My hope is to allow students many opportunities to think about careers, both ones students are already familiar with and new careers they may be learning about for the first time as well as personal interests and hobbies to set goals and dreams about their future career.

Throughout the career week, students will read four books (seen below) that are centered around careers and job exploration. Students will engage in dialogue and writing assignments with their classmates and teacher around what they learned from the books and their own personal career aspirations. This will prepare students to be ready for the career day happening at the end of career week.

Prior to engaging in the career day, we read the book The Art Lesson by Tomie DePaola. In the book, the main character expresses his desire to be an artist when he grows up. He is passionate about art and loves it with his whole heart. After reading the book, I asked students to tell me what they want to be when they grow up. Students wrote a sentence describing what they wanted to be and drew a matching picture.

Prior to planning the career day, I first needed to get approval from my school principal. I emailed him twice to see if we could set up a time to talk about different access opportunities I was interested in my planning in my classroom. I presented the idea of a career day to my principal as a way of boosting excitement and engagement around virtual learning. I also emphasized the importance of involving parents in the career day and inviting parents into our classroom to talk to us about their careers. He gave me the go ahead to plan and implement a career day for first graders as long as it did not interrupt the scheduled learning day. I told the principal I planned to align our morning meeting times around learning about careers and discussing what we wanted to be when we grew up. During our meeting we met for about 30 minutes and ironed out details around the career day such as standards that would align, books that would introduce a variety of careers to students and a time frame for implementation.

After I had picked a day to implement the career day and ironed out the lesson plans, the next step was inviting participants into our classroom that would be willing and able to engage with us virtually on zoom. I wanted to showcase a variety of different jobs as well as a ensure the diversity of participants. I think it is important that students see themselves within the career participants and is important to include both men, women and minority group entrepreneurs. I knew the majority of my students wanted to be a teacher when they grew up, so I chose participants who had previously been teachers and had transitioned into a different career. These participants used their experience as a teacher to help them pave their path to where they are now. I thought this was an important aspect to illustrate to students, that just because you chose one career path does not necessarily mean you will have that specific career for the rest of your life. Jobs are building blocks to help mold your resume and shape your experiences to prepare you for the next step in your life. I received three positive responses from three different career participants. The first was a parent of one of my students who works in technology, fixing and programming computers. The second was my Teach for America coach who helped prepare me to be a teacher and now coaches many other teachers around the Memphis area. The third began his career as a teacher, then become a principal and opened his own charter school in Memphis, TN. Now he is a county commissioner, working in local government to advocate for students and families, and establish equity in the Shelby County School district.

In order to effectively communicate with families about the career day and increase engagement, I sent out a flyer two weeks prior to the event. The flyer went home with students in their bi-weekly classwork packets. I also frequently posted on Seesaw to excite and remind students about our career day event.

Prior to career day, we reviewed classroom expectations for what students should be doing during the presentations to get the most out of the experience. Reviewing classroom expectations continuously with my students is extremely important as they are still learning how to thrive in a classroom environment, whether virtual or in-person. This year, students have not had many opportunities to practice classroom expectations when a guest is present in our classroom due to the virtual teaching environment, so I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to review behavior expectations and view examples and non examples of respectful behavior. This helped students prepare to be active listeners during our career day presentations as well as how to ask on-topic and relevant questions. The more opportunities students have at practicing these skills, the better they will be able to use them when the time is necessary.

Below is the career day lesson plan for the day of the event. I have included topics that were discussed during the access opportunity as well as transition activities and concluding activities students participated in. It was an exciting and joyful day. Many parents participated alongside their student during the Zoom event. Students were thrilled to learn more in depth about careers that they may have not been previously unfamiliar with. At the end of our career day, students were asked to complete a reflection assignment where they explained what new information they learned during the event and told the class what they hoped to be when they grow up. By facilitating an event and incorporating outside presenters, one of whom was a parent to a student in our class, we were able to continue to build and create relationships with community members who have a real impact on the work we do in our classroom everyday.

Here are a few examples of the engagement from both parents and students around our career day. I took a picture of our Zoom call during our first career day participant and received texts from parents following the event. The feedback was all very positive. Parents and students alike had a great time and students learned a lot throughout the entire week. It was a very successful and exciting day!

I received very positive feedback from parents and students about the event. The level of engagement and excitement in the classroom was extremely rewarding. Students gained a tremendous amount of knowledge around various careers and were excited to meet outside community members as well as one of our classmates parents. During virtual learning, students have had limited access to socialize with peers and other adults, but this access opportunity allowed them an opportunity to engage with both their classmates and outside adults. Parents were pleased with the deeper knowledge their child gained and many texted me to express their gratitude. I am considerably thankful and grateful for the strong relationships that continue to develop with the families in my classroom and I believe the virtual career day enhanced these relationships.

After the career day I asked students to record a video on Seesaw telling the class what they learned during career day and what they want to be when they grow up. The videos were shared with the class the following day. Students were really excited to hear what their classmates had to say. Students love when their classwork is shown to their peers and I have found that Seesaw videos have boosted engagement and excitement around virtual learning.

Overall our career day was extremely successful! Engagement and participation were strong throughout the entire event. Students loved the opportunity to invite guests into our classroom and meet new people within our community. I was very pleased with the positive feedback I received around the career day.

One thing I may consider changing about career day when I go to plan it for next year is allowing students to invite the guests into the classroom. I want to allow students the freedom and opportunity to bring someone that supports them into our classroom to talk about their career. I believe this would increase engagement even more and students will take ownership and responsibility over their learning and the events happening in our classroom.

Additionally, I wish I had spent more time teaching students how to ask on topic questions. Students asked some great questions to the participants, but many of the questions were centered around hobbies and outside interests, rather than specifically about the participants career and experience. I think students would have benefitted with more opportunities to ask on topic questions about a specific topic. Next year, I plan to take a few days leading up to career day for students to mastery asking and answering questions around a specific first grade topic.

Lastly, I would love for career day to become a whole school event with all the classrooms and grades involved and participating. This would take additional planning, but would be extremely successful to have a group of teachers, administrators and parents work together to implement a school wide career day. Even with the many barriers that have occurred throughout our virtual school year, we were able to have a successful and fun career day that all students enjoyed being a part of. I could not have planned such a successful career day without the help and support from the amazing parents in our classroom.