My Capstone Project Research
As a kid, you grow up in school from the starting age of 5 to the ending age of 17-18 in which you begin to learn all about the real world and what is expected of you after you leave high school. As you start to mature and get closer to the end of high school, such as myself, you start to look back at all of the years you've spent in school and wonder if you have been taught what you need to know for after you leave high school. My sophomore and junior year in high school I took and successfully finished the teaching pathway offered at my school. The pathway taught me a lot about being inside the classroom, especially by allowing us to teach at the elementary and middle schools. While I sat in the classroom with my mentor, Mr. Case, watching him teach 5th grade students, who still had a whole lot of school years ahead of them, I begin to think about how I would be graduating high school the following year and how there was so many unanswered questions I had and so much I hadn't learned. Although, I took the classes and finished the pathway, I can't say confidently that I know I am fully prepared for the next steps for my future. After completing this pathway, I wanted to know how could focusing my high school years on a pathway help to contribute or facilitate to my career in the future and so that I have an idea of what I really am prepared for and what I still need to learn before leaping out into the real world.
I am assuming that the pathways within the schools have a curriculum that focus on preparing us for the next step in our lives. I think that focusing my high school career on a pathway will allow me to leave prepared and ready for the next step in my life/carrer. I do think that the pathways are lacking to prepare us in some aspects though. Although, we are being taught specifically about the career we are wanting to further in, we aren't being taught how to manage money which is a big part of life. Managing money consists of tasks like balancing a checkbook or making wise financial decisions. Being able to do this will allow us to live comfortably in the future.
My research is all gathered from different sources, such as articles, news sources, as well as interviews. My interviews are conducted from business men/women, students, teachers, and the future principal of the new Innovation pathway school. One of the articles I used was about the importance of focusing on your career earlier rather than later. If you focus on your career earlier, you will be more prepared for what that career really expects of its employees. It is better to know more about your career when you are younger so that you aren't changing your mind about it when you're in college. This source is reliable since it comes from a government source. I also used an education source (also reliable) to find more out about how students aren't fully prepared for the real world when they leave high school since they aren't taught about money managing. As I interviewed Dr. Valery Lowe, who is the director/coordinator of College and Career Development in Forsyth County, she helped to provide me with more research already conducted about pathways and if they are really preparing and helping students with jobs after high school. She told me more about how colleges and employers who are hiring view pathways and can help sell yourself to a company. After researching from all of my sources, I have learned that there are so many views to my question and so much information that I have yet to learn about.
After researching and putting all of what I have learned together, I have the conclusion that pathways are preparing us for future jobs, but only in some ways. Schools are still lacking to teach us the importance of things such as paying rent, balancing a checkbook, or managing money which we will need for those future careers. We have to know how to manage money for future managing positions or accounting jobs we might acquire. I have also learned if you focus your high school career on a pathway and start at a young age you can save yourself from the money you would be losing if you changed your major in college. When looking for jobs, it is also good to have that you completed a pathway in high school as a experience since it proves you've been interested in that specific career since a young age. Employers would like to see the extra experience that you have since you started focusing on a career earlier, which I assumed employers wouldn't look at high school classes. As a conclusion, I have learned that pathways do facilitate and contribute to your future career.
Mandell, L. (n.d.). UB Today: Final Word: Why Johnny Can't Balance a Checkbook. Retrieved February 26, 2017, from http://www.buffalo.edu/UBT/UBT-archives/11_ubtw99/finalword.html
Torpey, E. (2015, January). Career planning for high schooners : Career Outlook. Retrieved January 28,2017,from https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2015/article/career-planning-for-high-schoolers.htm
Robins, K. (2015). Partnership explored for college, career academy in Cumming. Forsyth News.
Interviews: