I believe parents (and I am one) are challenged by the entire topic of career exploration when it comes to their child. Many parents are so consumed by their own career or job, pre-conceived thoughts about choosing a career, disbelief that there is a valid process available or overwhelmed with pushing their student to get through high school that the actual process of exploring careers comes up way too late in most families. We hear too many stories too frequently about seniors in college panicking about what to do for a career.

Are high schools providing enough? High schools are time-challenged. They don't have time to deliver the basic content that is expected. So squeezing in career exploration is going to be more of a "paper" in English class and access to a web portal of career links rather than a full focus on the students' interests and talents and taking time to carefully examine how those might match to different careers. Many high schools are expanding their offering and doing as much as possible to provide students with knowledge about careers. Some may even offer a career assessment that the student can take to widen their thinking about potential careers. The Career Days are great for bringing in guests to speak about careers. College Day is a great way in larger high schools to expose students to volumes of marketing literature about schools.

I hope I don't sound too cynical. This cynicism doesn't come from what schools are doing. I applaud and want high schools to continue to offer as much as they can. The cynicism comes from the end result that I am told over and over again - that what was provided didn't make a difference for the student. - that it didn't really help. Are the efforts that high schools make with their career exploration program resulting in measurable desired outcomes? Is it enough? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Is it enough to treat career exploration as a task on a task list by school administrators? By seeing it as a task, they (school boards) look for the lowest-cost solution and then "check it off" their list. What if there were an entirely different paradigm for having a semester-long career coaching program in school.

I am finding that students at all levels of academic accomplishment benefit in very tangible ways from the Career Coaching for Students™ program. Let's start with the "under-performer". This is a student who is smart, has good reading and reasoning skills but doesn't get the grades to consistently stay in the top 10% of their class. This student may also display a lack of enthusiasm around school work. They may be arguing why they don't want to take AP classes (advanced placement subject classes).

The under-performer may be experiencing a loss of direction and vision for their future. If you don't have a vision of yourself into the future, how hard is it to be motivated to do "work".  School work is the students' "work". In the work world, leaders are taught to articulate and explain to their employees the vision and goals of the company AND for the job they are doing. The odds of having a much more motivated and "engaged" employee is much greater when this happpens. A similar correlation is seen with students who know themselves and have an idea about their future. They "work" harder. They ae more motivated. They connect the dots between academic coursework and their own personal future.

So the new paradigm I am hoping for in schools is that a program like Career Coaching for Students™ (in-depth, tangible, meaningful, credible and valid) is an actual semester-long course given in the Spring of the Freshman year or Fall of the Sophomore year. School admininstrators, teachers and parents might be surprised at the result. The potential for higher test scores across all demographic groups is great. The potential for more students with goals to attend college (because they've found a career they want to pursue) is significantly greater.  Is what's currently being done enough at your high school? Ask a high school student.