Serving Career Standards Through Community Involvement

Looking for a fun and engaging way to introduce students to careers? Starting a Career Cafe will help you build excitement about careers through community members sharing their career journeys!

I wrote a previous post about starting and facilitating a Career Cafe.  I recently presented at the Integrated Learning Conference and the Pennsylvania School Counselors Association Conference about Career Café with the school counselor I work with and the school counselor from whom we initially got the idea to start Career Café.  Both presentations went very well! I wanted to give you an update about Career Café and provide you with additional information you can use to start your own!

Last year we facilitated eight Career Cafés for 5th through 8th grade. Our speakers included an art teacher, bank branch manager, lawyer, chef, cosmetologist, news reporter, humaine society worker, and college basketball players.  The response to Career Café was great! Students loved it and we loved facilitating it.

Some of our speakers wanted to go above and beyond after working with our students.  The lawyer who spoke at Career Café invited eight students to visit to Penn State Dickenson School of Law! Students were able to participate in a mock class, see the court room where students hold trails, eat in the dining area, and tour the campus. They had a blast!

This year we are hosting ourCareer Café in our school library. We are planning to facilitate Career Cafe for third through eighth grade this year.  To make our Career Cafe look even more like a Cafe, we purchased polka dot table clothes over the summer. I also just made flower pens to put in vases on the tables.

Here's a picture of what they look like with the table clothes!


The flower pens add such a fun pop of color and students can use them for their surveys! It is a win-win!

We have hosted two Career Cafés so far, a detective from our city police and a marketing specialist from a grief and loss counseling center.

This year I made business card sized passes for Career Cafe using VistaPrint.

FRONT
BACK

I also made a banner on VistaPrint to announce our "Speaker du jour!"


I used clear plastic page protectors and tape to affix the speaker of the day.  Below are pictures of the banner in use this year.



I hang the banner outside of the door of the library, which is our Career Café location this year.


If you want to order pre-made Career Café items like the banner or business card passes pictured above visit the School Counselor Blog Store!

Have you started a Career Café of your own? Do you have ideas of how you could start a Career Café at your school?

Comment below, tweet, contact Danielle, or share on the School Counselor Blog Facebook Page!


Danielle is a K-12 Certified School Counselor, Nationally Certified Counselor, and blogger at School Counselor Blog, a place where school counselors share innovative ideas, creative lesson plans, and quality resources. Connect with Danielle via email, follow her on twitter, add her on LinkedIn or Google+, and become a fan of the School Counselor Blog Facebook Page.http://vistaprint.tellapal.com/a/clk/H1V1W

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