Setting goals and work-based learning go hand in hand with students gaining real world experience for the world of work. Goals in job interviews, on work assignments and work sites, and for long- and short-term career objectives can greatly help students carve and navigate a path for their individual careers that can be beneficial, fruitful and fulfilling for a life's worth of work.
One of the things I hope we can improve on next school year is to spend more time priming our students for the interview process, prepping them for having conversations with potential employers in the actual interviews. Coaching them, if you will, and also helping them to prepare their resumés so that the employers can have a full picture on work and education experience the students may already have.
CTE is such a great vehicle for high school students to obtain real world work experience while still in school, so by the time they graduate, they will have valuable work experience to make themselves that much more marketable. And with that experience, a clearer path for their careers will be established. But not without setting goals and having work-based learning in their wheelhouse, as these two elements are two of the crucial building blocks for the foundation to great careers
