S/O - When should kids start thinking about career

[rugbywife]

I was reading the army thread and the idea that grade 7 is too early to think about careers came up...

I am a teacher (going into my 12th year) and the last five years I taught grade 8. In Ontario we have elementary school til grade 8 and then they go to high school. In high school they have to choose 'streams' for each class they take...these 'streams' in grade 9 and 10 are called 'applied' and academic' (there is another stream called 'essentials' for students who are working at different expectations based on special needs and behavioural issues).
Then in grades 11 and 12 there are 4 streams: 'open', 'workplace', 'college' and, 'university'. The stream you are in for grades 9 and 10 dictate what you can take in 11 and 12...SO...all this to say we do indeed start talking to the kids about their 'pathways' in grades 7 and 8. Kids are expected to start thinking about their strengths, weaknesses, interests, life goals, etc, because by the time they hit grade 9 they have to have already started making some life choices.

This is a bit of a P&R because I have to go to the school board now to work on timetabling for my school but I will be back later...I would love to hear what people think about when students should be expected to start making decisions that impact their adulthood in terms of education...if not in middle school, when?

[Daria Morgandorffer]

I don't think most kids are mature enough to start seriously thinking about career paths until 11th-12 grade. Hell, I didn't even start thinking about it until I was 22.

[rugbywife]

k, follow-up: if you don't start discussing career paths until much later, how do you educate children...do you teach them all as if they were going to end up in university, even if this isn't the best possible path for all students? K, now I really have to go, need to be there at half past!

[Deleted]

I've got mixed feelings about how its done in Ontario - that program was coming in when I was going out. All we had was 'general' or 'advanced' and generally speaking, advanced was for university-bound as opposed to college bound. I also had OAC though which was mostly for uni-bound kids. Thats since been dropped of course.

I think most kids know wether or not they might go to college versus university in middle school. They might not know the program, but a lot of kids have a general idea of type of path they might take. Heck, most of the grade 6-8's I went to school with knew that.

It should be pointed out that in Canada, college is more practical, applied stuff and university is more theory stuff. IE if you want to be a dental hygenist you will go to college. Teacher, doctor, nurse, etc will take you via university. I think its a bit different in the US.

[Daria Morgandorffer]

Aug 14, 2012 11:25:28 GMT -5 rugbywife said:

k, follow-up: if you don't start discussing career paths until much later, how do you educate children...do you teach them all as if they were going to end up in university, even if this isn't the best possible path for all students? K, now I really have to go, need to be there at half past!

I definitely think you can teach children about the different options (college vs. trade etc), I just think it's too much to ask a child to decide on a particular career.

At 17 I wanted to be an interior decorator. ha.ha.ha.

[emilyj]

Aug 14, 2012 11:25:28 GMT -5 rugbywife said:

k, follow-up: if you don't start discussing career paths until much later, how do you educate children...do you teach them all as if they were going to end up in university, even if this isn't the best possible path for all students? K, now I really have to go, need to be there at half past!

Like Daria said, you can definitely teach them about options without educating them on career paths. I think the discussion on options needs to start earlier, but the discussion on career paths?

I think a knowledge of what careers are might be good to have in the later high school years (junior/senior years), but I don't think kids are ready at that point to be deciding "Yes, that's the career for me!" Some kids will know, but most won't.

Hell, I changed my major my senior year of college.

[wawa]

I agree that expecting a kid to have chosen a career at 12 is ridiculous, but starting to push them to think about it? That seems totally reasonable.

Obviously they are allowed to change their minds 300 times between 7th grade and well...death, but by the time you are in middle school kids should have some clue whether they eventually see themselves in college/university, tech school (college in canada?) or some other pathway.

12 and 13 year old kids get asked what they want to be when they grow up. By that age the answer should not be combined astronaut/ballarina/football player anymore and if it is...that kid probably needs to grow the fuck up a bit and become acquainted with the real world.

The answer does not need to be "I want to be a middle manager at a mid-sized financial firm." But a real answer that shows some basic thought about what you are good at and what you like to do is to be encouraged. I wanted to be a librarian because I loved to read and I loved the library and I thought research was actually kinda fun and I think paste smells good. I did not know exactly what kind of degree that required or how much money that would bring me, but I knew that it required good grades in english class and eventually going to college - and I knew college requried good grades in general and staying in the "smart kid" classes. That's all the detail I expect out of a kid that age, but I don't see anything wrong with expecting that much.

(and I also totally changed my mind when I hit high school and found out I was good at higher level math. But I was already one year behind all the other math smarties who had taken alg 1 in 8th grade, so I had to bust my ass with a year of double math to catch up. Again...this tracking starts in middle school. it has to. How the hell else do you handle some kids who are ready for alg. II in 9th grade and some who barely scrape by in 12th?)

[Deleted]

I think a discussion of options can start as early as 2 or 3 but at that age kids want to be things they know like firefighters not accountants :-)

My 6 year old has informed me is going to be an engineer and make thinks but not a mechanic because all they do is fix things :-)

[rugbywife]

It isn't really about the kids choosing an exact career, it's about them having an idea of what they need to plan for after high school.

[AJL]

I'll be 35 in January and I've changed career paths a couple of times, all for the better. I think encouraging kids to develop their interests is a good thing. Pushing them to track in to a career path, not so much.

[wawa]

Aug 14, 2012 11:51:57 GMT -5 rugbywife said:

It isn't really about the kids choosing an exact career, it's about them having an idea of what they need to plan for after high school.

exactly. That's a much more concise version of what I was trying to say.

[OscarQ]

I think it's part of my responsibility as a parent to identify what my child does well and enjoys doing and then talk to him about possible career paths based on that combination. If he's into math and science and good with putting things together we'll talk about options for both college and tech school. Maybe he wants to be a mechanical engineer. Maybe he wants to be a mechanic. I don't think 7th grade is too young to start talking about things in very general terms. I am wary about the cattle herding approach of putting kids into specific lanes so early though.

[terpsfan]

I'm not onboard with the idea of "pushing" anyone into anything (not sure how that would happen anyway) but I absolutely believe in the exposing of middle schoolers to lots of career options, especially in math and science/technology, and especially women in those fields. I also think that it's very valuable for a middle schooler to start thinking about what sorts of things he/she likes to do and how that can apply to future potential career options. I chose activities, classes and did internships (in high school) based on a general idea of "what I wanted to be".

[marie427]

Whether there's a Career Day in middle school or something, kids are always going to be thinking about what they want to be when they grow up. I aspired to be something different every year starting in elementary school - like in 5th grade when we learned about marine biology, I wanted to become a marine biologist and asked my teacher about how I could become one. Same thing in 6th grade but instead it was about becoming an archaeologist. And so on and so forth. I think we should encourage kids to learn about different careers that they show an interest in but tell them to always keep an open mind too and that it's okay to change your mind.

[msmerymac]

Aug 14, 2012 11:29:14 GMT -5 Daria Morgandorffer said:

Aug 14, 2012 11:25:28 GMT -5 rugbywife said:

k, follow-up: if you don't start discussing career paths until much later, how do you educate children...do you teach them all as if they were going to end up in university, even if this isn't the best possible path for all students? K, now I really have to go, need to be there at half past!

I definitely think you can teach children about the different options (college vs. trade etc), I just think it's too much to ask a child to decide on a particular career.

At 17 I wanted to be an interior decorator. ha.ha.ha.

I agree with this. In middle school, kids and teachers can figure out what a student's strengths are. Some people are better at writing. Some people are better at math. I think you can stream kids into classes that play to their strengths, and assume that they might be interested a career that could incorporate those things in the future.

I never wanted to be a doctor. I don't really like science. It wasn't my major strength and therefore I decided against taking an AP science course in 11th or 12th grade, you know?

But by the time I was in 6th grade, my parents were considering sending me to a college prep high school, because they thought it would be better for me academically than our local school district. I was already being streamed into the "higher" level classes (in 5th-8th grade we were grouped into math, english, etc based on ability, so that the pace of the class would be good for each student - more advanced students could move at a quicker pace together, while more remedial students could move at a slower pace to obtain the understanding of the topic they needed). So, yeah, obviously we were thinking about the fact that I would go to college and might want a more challenging high school academic environment when I was 11 or so. (To be fair, obviously my family was middle class, not poor. And my parents had been assuming I would go to college since birth.)

That's not to say I decided on a career. When I was 13/14 I was thinking of becoming an architect. Oddly enough, when I was 10/11/12 I thought about being a journalist, and that's eventually what I ended up majoring in - but again, that's because I LIKE writing and research, and I'm good at it. So it makes sense that I'd eventually choose a path that incorporated my strengths.

I would absolutely not like a system where you had to decide on a specific career in middle school, or even high school.

[llama]

In theory, I think the streams make sense and would be a practical way for students to feel out their strengths and weaknesses and follow up with classes accordingly. I don't think that middle school is too early for kids to start thinking about what they are good at and be exposed to information about how those strengths could benefit them in different professions and work environments.

In practice, I worry that the streams would disadvantage students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who may see themselves as having limited options for careers or perhaps have not been exposed to very high familial expectations about a future career (or, in some cases, actively discouraged, as I was growing up.) Not that it is always the case, but it does worry me at an age where students are still fairly young, live at home under the control of their parents with limited opportunities to branch out, and may feel they have to make a choice that their parents agree with to keep the peace. I had friends in college who were basically in that situation of choosing the path their parents wanted and they had a lot more autonomy and distance from their families while making their final decisions.

Another concern would be teachers themselves pushing students into certain careers or streams. I'm sure the majority of teachers are lovely and amazing and without bias, but it's possible that expectations from within the school itself could influence students in a negative way. For example, as a middle schooler and high schooler I was able to choose my own classes and selected honors (with permission from my past instructors) but when I got to high school and went to required pre-graduation counseling, my guidance counselor suggested that I wasn't a "right fit" for college because neither of my parents had gone and my family was poor and couldn't afford for me to go. I had to do independent research with the help of one supportive teacher about the different types of schools I might get into and information about financial aid and how it worked.

Rugbywife, do you notice either of these things happening in Canadian schools? Aside from anecdotes, I think there is some research that shows that it happens with some frequency in US schools which makes me shy away from wanting similar tracking here, but I don't know a lot about the Canadian educational system.

[wawa]

Aug 14, 2012 12:23:01 GMT -5 Lucy Honeychurch said:

I think ANY age is a good time to start talking to a kid about what they like to do and what they're good at and what they want to be when they grow up. My six-year-old wants to be an architect, because he says he's good at math and likes to draw and build.

It's when you start getting specific, i.e., calling in an Army recruiter to talk to twelve-year-olds, that I get twitchy. lol.

you do realize that joining the military is not a monolithic career choice, right? It's not like every single person in the army is just a soldier, all air force people fly planes, and all navy dudes learn how to sail boats. People get training in all kinds of shit in the military - mechanics, computers, health care, etc. Not saying that's a good reason to be cool with middle school recruitment, but looking at military service as a very specific career choice is innaccurate.

I don't disagree with you otherwise, but I wanted to nitpick that part.

[cattledogkisses]

Aug 14, 2012 11:52:57 GMT -5 wawa said:

Aug 14, 2012 11:51:57 GMT -5 rugbywife said:

It isn't really about the kids choosing an exact career, it's about them having an idea of what they need to plan for after high school.

exactly. That's a much more concise version of what I was trying to say.

This is where I'm at too. This should obviously not be a stressful, "you must decide the rest of your life now" kind of situation, but I think that getting them to start considering general areas they might be interested in isn't a bad thing.

I think it was missmerymac who brought up in the other thread that the field/s you're interested in can influence the classes you take in high school, and that was definitely the case for me. I knew I wanted to go into the sciences, so I bulked up big time on math and hard sciences in HS. I ended up starting college with almost a sophomore standing due to AP credits that counted towards my degree. The academic track I needed to be on to get into those AP classes my senior year started in middle school - 7/8th grade.

[llama]

I have another thought that influences my opinion about things. How easy is to to escape from a stream or change streams if you change your mind or your interests/abilities in a crucial area change?

For example, I sucked at math in middle school, but I went on to take Calculus in high school and do well. I was terrible at pre-algebra and even worse at algebra but liked geometry. I am ace at statistics. How do you even classify a kid like middle school me in the stream system? I graduated and went on to a prestigious college and majored in a subject that uses statistics and not much else math-y (yes, I know stats is not real math, roll with me here.) I was strong in all the other subjects but not like a whiz in science or anything. Not that kids don't slip through the tracks the way the US does things, but I do worry that some kids would get streamed inappropriately due to a variety of factors and then be out of luck if they'd like to change careers later on or if the stream they are on doesn't lead them to where they want to be. Can that sort of change still happen in college (ie: changing majors) like it can in the US, or are you limited due to your high school tracks. It is certainly easier for a student with adequate high school preparation to major in a certain subject, but in very few cases is it actually impossible to change subjects or careers. Sometimes it will take a bit longer or require a bit of extra money (but usually not too many years worth, depending on how far along you were on path #1) but it can be done. Is the same true in the Canadian system?

[rugbywife]

Yes, it can be done, but in the case of math it does require a bridge course. So, if you take grade 9 applied, you can only take grade 10 applied and then with grade 10 applied you can't take grade 11 university math, you need grade 10 academic for that . If you want to do grade 10 academic after taking grade 9 applied there is a bridge course. The same is not true in other subject areas however, if you have a class and get a high enough grade they will let you take the next grade's class in a different stream.

What we struggle with the most is teaching our students (or in most cases their parents) that university is not the only valuable pathway. There are college and apprenticeship options that are much better fits for many students. Too many parents still believe that university is the only end goal worth focusing on, when it is a) not the right learning setting for many students and b) does not necessarily hold to promise of jobs that many feel it does. Our major focus in grade 8 was to highlight career options in four different pathways (workplace right out of high school, apprenticeship, college , university) and then explain how you could get to that pathway through high school.

(edited for an error)

[cookiemdough]

I am absolutely against tracking kids that early. I am fine with giving knowledge on what classes are necessary to prepare for college, but I think core curriculum should be given based on ability not whether they will use it or not in their next step after high school. There are ways to offer vocational opportunities within the high school curriculum for kids that want it. We just chose to move away from that in order to focus on standardized testing.