FTCE Guidance and Counseling PK-12: Basics of Career Development and Postsecondary Opportunities and Academic Advisement

Advantages of Evidence-Based Curricula in Helping Students Meet Sequenced Outcome Goals
Counselors can facilitate students in meeting short-term and long-term goals by using either curricula they have developed, commercially available curricula, or a combination of both. There are several advantages of using commercially available curricula, the first of which is that they are usually evidence-based, having been developed and revised in response to professional research and tracked success rates. Counselors using evidence-based curricula experience the added benefit of more widespread institutional support for an established, evidence-based curricular model. Counselors can collaborate with school staff and administration to select an appropriate commercial curriculum, and from there identify pedagogy that best addresses student outcomes. When a commercial curriculum is selected and adopted, outcomes can be matched with appropriate pedagogical methods. Often these evidenced-based curricula provide both students and school faculty with the confidence and efficacy that result from utilizing established pedagogy.

Contributing to Academic Achievement While Targeting Personal and Social Development
Counselors can best serve their students and the school system as a whole by continually integrating developmental goals with academic goals. Since students mature and move through the graded school system simultaneously, counselors should maintain a conscientious awareness of achievement standards in the areas of academic development, personal-social development, and career development. These areas are inherently interdependent, and an effective counselor will consciously integrate them toward the holistic development of his or her students. The ASCA identifies three key strategies for this integration:
Counselors should be aware of the academic content and schedule of classes, and should tailor counseling sessions to the academic needs of the Counselors should refer to the school documents and personnel for explicit and implicit goals and competency standards for the students.
Counselors should be proactive in enriching certain academic areas for students.

Addressing Career Development with Students in Grades K to 5
For young students, career awareness is the primary goal of career development. Children can be made aware of the different kinds of jobs, and it's to their long-term benefit if that learning also addresses the idea that they need not feel limited by gender, socioeconomic status, or ethnic background—or even the attitudes of their family members. In early school years, career awareness can be facilitated by field trips to places where people do interesting work, by having adults come to the classroom to talk about and demonstrate their work, by playing games and creating stories about different kinds of work, and by watching videos and reading books about occupations. Children can be encouraged to notice how their favorite activities might relate to work. Reporting on the work their parents and other family members do can be another way to engage the curiosity and awareness of the world of work. Craft fairs or farmers' markets, where children make (or grow) and sell their work are another way of showing children that they can work for themselves in ways that they might not otherwise consider if they've grown up in a corporate-focused work culture.

Career Counseling for Middle School Students
Middle school students should be encouraged to explore careers, investigating how their interests and strengths could lead to satisfying work. Students might go with their parents to work, might interview other adults about their occupations, and might read about unusual career choices. At this time of life, grades will begin to impact the options children have regarding college: it's also a time for career counselors to assist students whose life paths might lead them to the trades, to entrepreneurial activities, to the arts, or to other nontraditional vocations. Students whose families have traditionally been involved in particular professions might be discovering that they're well-suited to the tradition or that they will need support in pursuing other interests. Part-time jobs after school give students a little spending money, a feeling for what makes a strong work ethic, and a taste of what it's like to work in a particular occupation. Volunteering is another way that students can explore potential interests and gain skills.

Career Counseling for High School Students
Career counselors may administer career inventories to help students identify personal strengths and interests associated with particular occupations. Students will need guidance in choosing high school courses relevant to their future paths in college, trade school, or business.
Preparing for college entrance exams and locating funding for training are parts of student career development work that may require the help of a school counselor, especially when students' families are not familiar with the course of the students' proposed occupational fields.
Students from disadvantaged background should be helped to take courses, prepare for exams, and locate scholarships that will help them overcome those disadvantages. Personal encouragement and locating mentors or guides are valuable strategies because building hope will increase the student's motivation to use the tools. Without hope and support from a trusted advisor, students whose social/familial environment does not support their career paths can be overwhelmed by the process and mired in pessimism.

Helping Students When Career Interests Don't Match Career Assessment
Career assessments measure interests, but many factors contribute to career choices. For example, a student with a Holland code of artistic-entrepreneurial-social (AES) may state the determination to become an engineer. The counselor can discuss with the student how the AES code doesn't seem to match up with the student's ambition and explore possible reasons for the incongruence without telling the student that 'you're wrong.'
It's possible that the student's parents have raised their child to take up a 'solid occupation,' and the student is either trying to please the parents or has other personal goals. Perhaps the student isn't aware of potential careers available for the Holland codes and needs to explore.
Perhaps, the student is multiskilled, wants the security of a higher-paying job, and plans to keep art on the side while becoming a consulting engineer (satisfying the entrepreneurial tendencies.) The main purpose of the counselor in the situation is not to force the student to see 'reality' but to support the student, using the discrepancy in the test to fully explore, actively choose, and fully prepare for the chosen career.