A year of staff preparation should pay off for years to come in helping some of Butler Area School District’s youngest students get a head start on career learning. Teachers at Northwest Elementary School, one of Butler Area’s seven K-5 buildings, worked this year with the Consortium to introduce their students to the Wonders of Work (WoW).
WoW was the focus Principal Matthew Martinez chose when each of Butler Area’s K-5 buildings selected themes for the year. He reached out to the Consortium to provide professional development after reviewing other ways we had been involved in career education, including the Career Journeys video series and related teaching materials that we introduced during the pandemic.
Consortium staffers Christy Kuehn, PhD, and Jenn Sethman worked with Northwest educators on exploring ways to roll out WoW, beginning with a workshop where they shared research on the importance of career learning in K-5, strategies for implementation, and ideas for classroom activities. They followed up with virtual check-ins throughout the fall; a second workshop in January on best practices for workplace site visits; virtual check-ins throughout the spring; and a final workshop in May for teachers to reflect on their WoW experience and professional growth.
Northwest chose to help focus students on thinking about their interests and strengths using an assessment system the late Psychologist John L. Holland developed known as RIASEC (for Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional). It was designed to help link personality traits to careers.
Kuehn and Sethman were especially helpful in interpreting the RIASEC traits to make them age-appropriate—in other words, “what ‘social’ would mean to a second grader,” Martinez said.
The Consortium’s work with Northwest also emphasized that elementary career learning should “focus on exploration, not elimination,” said Kuehn, Director of Professional and Student Learning. “We encourage teachers and families to help their students find out about all of the opportunities that exist in the professional world without asking them to rule anything out.”
Martinez said teachers also benefited from guidance about employer site visits. He said Kuehn and Sethman helped educators look at them as distinct from field trips and shared tips for preparation and reflection.
Feedback from educators on the Consortium staff’s work was very positive, he said. “I thought they offered a great balance of providing new information to our staff and allowing the staff time to work together as grade levels to plan out their trips and their activities. They also provided guidance throughout the planning.”
