Karen Phipps

Karen Phipps

About me

I am the Career and Technical Education Lead Teacher in a small urban school in Connecticut.  My department is made up of business, culinary, and technology education teachers.  I have taught Computer Applications, Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance, Accounting, and Marketing.  I have been a DECA advisor and school store supervisor.  I am interested in learning more about career pathways for students and developing a career center where students can meet with mentors, research career interests, apply for jobs, and improve soft skills. 

Activity

The information obtained in CS101 will be utitlized to develope a Career Services Center at the high school level.  The Career Services Center will be a college and career pathways room that will be used for small group meetings, workshops, taining sessions, and video conferencing.  The Center will include resources on employability skills, job outlook, and training programs.  

In this module, I have learned the importance of feedback.  It is necessary to collect data from alumni, current students, and employers to ensure you are meeting the needs of all stakeholders.  This can be done through surveys. Surveys must be conducted in a timely manner and on a regular basis to ensure the most recent employment data is collected and utilized to make updates and improvements to the Career Services Department.

 

In this section, I have learned the importance of creating workshops for students on resume, cover letters, networking, interviews, maintaining employment, negotiating salary, and seeking advancement.  Several of these topics can be covered in a high school Career Service Department.  One important topic, to discuss with students, is sending a follow up letter. This is an important transferrable skill that all students should learn.

I have learned that an established, updated, and well maintained Career Service Department (CSD) is necessary to benefit both current students, alumni, and business and industry stakeholders.  I appreaciate the list of services a CSD should offer and will use them as a guide to develop a CSD to high school students in my district. 

 

I have learned that there are many things that need to be considered when setting up a Career Service Department (CSD).  All stakeholders (CSD staff, teachers, students, alumni, representatives from business and industry) must work together to create a mission, purpose, and goals of the CSD.  Stakeholders should determine what services will be offered.  Services must be updated and promoted to ensure the CSD benefits students, alumni, and employeers. The information obtained in this portion of the class will be used to begin discussion of developeing a CSD at the high school level.

To ensure students are equipped with soft skills needed to be successful in the workplace, the Career and Technical Education department in my school is working with teachers, parents, students, administration, guidance counselors, and representatives from business and industry to develop a College and Career Readiness rubric to help students self assess and to offer feedback to students on a variety of soft skills.  These skills include time management, verbal and non verbal communication skills, collaboration skills, etc. 

One important take away from the ED 403 class is to encourage students to use feedback to make improvements to hard and soft skills.

 

This course reinforced that good communication skills are necessary for teamwork and collaboration.  The soft skills addressed in this couse can be practiced in a variety of ways and in all content areas.  I believe that to prepare students for college and career, all subject areas must take part in teaching and reinforcing soft skills. 

 

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