Are They Really Ready?

Career Readiness is something we all pursue for our students, but are they really prepared after they graduate high school? I feel like the term “career readiness” has just come about within the last couple of years even though it’s always been a true educator’s goal. How does your school prepare your students to be career ready? What can you implement to make this goal even more successful? These are questions we all need to consider, and career readiness needs to start as early as possible. Students need to be thinking about what they want to be when they grow up and start making a plan to reach their goal.

Of course, most students will change their mind about their future career several times over the years, but the foundation to start planning needs to remain constant. Students need to be exposed to as many career choices as possible throughout their K-12 years with career days, job shadowing, guest speakers, college and career fairs, onsite tours, etc. How will they know what they really want to do unless they get as many details and hands-on opportunities as possible to help them realize their strengths?

Once a student has a career goal in mind, it’s up to us as educators to help them meet their goal. We must maintain higher standards for our students and not let them be satisfied with the very minimum. How do we do that? Once again, we have to instill this as early as possible. Help them to understand in elementary school the importance of communication, work ethic and coping skills. As a high school counselor, I see these three things as the most frustrating of all. We all have students who want to give up too easily and we just cannot allow that anymore. We should have high expectations for all of our students, encourage them to find the best in themselves and not allow them to settle for anything less.

As school counselors, let us collaborate with each other within our regions and within our schools from elementary to high school to make specific plans to get our students career ready. Let us get higher education personnel, military personnel, and community members involved with our schools so our students can get a clear sense of the real world and what it entails. I tell my seniors all the time that I want them to become productive citizens of society when they leave high school, whether that means going to college, the military or the workforce, but I’m always questioning if some of them are really ready for it. I don’t want this to be a question lurking in my mind about certain students anymore. I want to feel confident that they are ready, and I know you want the same for your students. I hope we can all come together and create a movement for the students of Arkansas to be more career ready than any other state. Like our students, we must have higher expectations for ourselves as educators and for our state.

Laquietta Stewart is ArSCA president-elect and a school counselor at Paragould High School.