JA Careers with a Purpose®
JA Careers with a Purpose introduces students to the importance of seeking careers that help them realize their life potential and noble purpose. The program demonstrates the importance of positive values, life maxims, and ethical decision-making within the context of career and life decisions. Seven required, volunteer-led sessions.
The key learning objectives listed beside each session state the skills and knowledge students will gain.
Session One: A Sense of Purpose
Students explore the various roles they will play in their lives and how their own skills, interests, and values will help define those roles.
Key Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
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Explain the concept of life roles.
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Express their skills, interests, and values.
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Select maxims that help define their noble purpose.
Session Two: What Do You Value
Students discuss values and the ways in which they prefer to work. They explore scenarios in which their values are tested and work decisions are made, and then examine how they arrive at their decisions.
Key Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
Session Three: What’s in a Name?
Jobs vs. Careers
Students explore the differences between a job and a career and learn how they can apply their skills, interests, and values to a career with a noble purpose.
Key Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
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Explain the differences between a job and a career with a noble purpose.
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Understand that their skills, interests, and values align with multiple career options.
Session Four: The World of Work
Students explore the world of work and see how their skills, interests, and values align with various career clusters, pathways, and careers.
Key Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
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Identify a way to structure the world of work.
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Analyze their skills, interests, and values, and explore career clusters, pathways, and careers.
Session Five: Your Decisions
Students make decisions as if they were employed in a real-world, high- growth, high-demand industry.
Key Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
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Follow a decision-making process to make choices about work.
Session Six: Your Code of Conduct
Students discuss ethics in the workplace and understand how personal ethics and business ethics intersect.
Key Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
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Explain how personal ethics can affect business decisions.
Session Seven: Take Action
Students use a decision-making process to consider post-high school career options.
Key Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
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Make a decision about what they plan to do in the future.
JA Careers with a Purpose enhances students’ learning of the following concepts and skills:
Concepts–Career, Career choices, Job, Life roles, Maxim, Noble purpose, World of work
Skills–Analyzing information, Building self-confidence, Categorizing data, Oral and written communication, Public speaking, Working in groups
JA Careers with a Purpose is a 7 session course and is recommended for students in grades 9-12. Instructional materials are packaged for 32 students and include detailed activity plans for the volunteer, workbooks for students, and consumable materials to be used in the classroom.
All JA programs are designed to support the skills and competencies identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. These programs also augment school-based, work-based, and connecting activities for communities with school-to-work initiatives.
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