Volume 17, Number 1, Fall 2006

Who Me? A Career Educator?

Laura Allen

Absolutely! As a volunteer working with youth, you are truly in the career education business whether you’ve thought of it that way or not. Every 4-H project you lead provides youth the opportunity to EXPLORE its relationship to the world of work. Why is it important to see yourself as a career educator? Because the reality for most of our youth is that they’ll spend the best part of their day on the job, and we want them to be happy in the work they choose. They are the future and you are an important part of that future.

Have you heard the saying, “It’s not always the best person that gets the job, but the person best at getting the job”? I believe this is true, and I am excited about the opportunity I’ve been given to help boost our 4-H career education efforts across the state. We have a wonderful opportunity to work with youth to help them develop life skills that transition them from school to work.

Because we’re part of MSU, we have information at our fingertips that not only tells us what employers are looking for in future employees, but what types of jobs will be available in the future. We’re partnering with the experts at MSU Career Services and Placement (CSP) to make information available to our youth that will help them be successful workers and entrepreneurs of the future. For instance, CSP has a fill-in resume form. We’ve taken that same form and tweaked it a bit to meet the needs of young people and have made it available on our web site under Careers.

We’ve prepared a packet of activities that will help you introduce school-to-work concepts, no matter what 4-H project you’re leading. For instance, with a dairy cattle project, you can:

• Take a look at milk as a product.
• Have youth break into small teams and ask them to list as many jobs as they can that are tied to the production of milk, all the way to delivering the product to the dairy case in stores.

Don’t forget to start as far back as nourishing the cow so it will produce milk!

• Have one person report for each team and see how the lists compare. It’s important to point out that EVERY job is important in the TEAM effort to get the milk on the shelf. Most of us need milk, don’t we?
• You’ve just helped youth EXPLORE a large list of jobs that might spark a new career interest.

If you want to take this activity to another level, take a few of the jobs identified and have participants come up with ACTION words you would use in a resume to describe yourself if you were applying for that job. A fun way to do this is to have the group form a circle and starting with the letter A, come up with an action word for each letter of the alphabet. Each person tosses a koosh ball to another as you move through the alphabet. Pretty simple, but it’s an important part of building a resume. Our Careers Web page has a list of action words to help you along.

No matter the topic, you can always bring in a guest to speak for a few minutes about a job or career related to the project your club is working on. Leave time for questions and answers and make use of our Career Fair Interview Questions form that helps youth think about the kind of information they need to know if they’re considering a particular area of work. Or have a career focus for an entire club meeting with multiple presenters or a panel. If your group is doing a community service EXPERIENCE with Habitat for Humanity, possible speakers could include a construction company owner, hardware store clerk, electrician, painter, realtor or the person at Habitat for Humanity who coordinates the volunteers. Use your imagination, and you’ll be surprised to see where this can go. Better yet, brainstorm the idea with the kids, and have them do the inviting! Delegation is an excellent work skill to pass on to youth.

I invite you to share your thoughts and ideas about what our 4-H youth need in order to ACHIEVE a successful transition from school to work. Do you have resources you’re using that can be added to the 4-H Pathways to Career Education Resource list or activities that could be posted on the Web site to share with everyone? Connect with me via e-mail at lacourse@msu.edu or by phone at (517) 432-7632.

Laura Allen, 4-H Career Education Coordinator