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This video, from Autism Speaks, highlights a job shadowing experience in retail for students who have autism.  Job shadowing provides opportunities for students to explore specific careers of interest.  Job shadowing is a work-based career exploration activity (Morningstar & Clavenna, 2018).

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Young adults with autism learn valuable skills at GAP job shadow day

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In this activity, there are many opportunities to develop social, civic and leadership skills through possible internships. This is imperative to develop equality of opportunity, inclusion and integration. ( NCWD/Youth Guideposts for Success, Second Edition)

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Access to the Future: Preparing Students with Disabilities for Careers

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Career development staff share ideas for making services accessible to students with disabilities. Help us caption & translate this video! http://amara.org/v/4ll/

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This video really brings up the importance of Career Exploration and how to teach youth  to be aware of the wide range of careers and/or occupations that are available to them for the future.  To be able to provide youth with the opportunity to explore fields of interests may open up new thoughts of careers they may not have thought of. (Career Development Continuum, page 1 of 1)

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UA Student Engagement & Career Development

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Finding out about jobs or trades gives students a sence of something that they want to do. Participating in a Trade Fair allows an introduction of the job, its requirements and potential career options.(Luecking, Richard. The Way to Work)

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Career Exploration & Awareness Month

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"Career awareness often begins in preschool, continuing through middle school, and focuses on discovering the existence of work, jobs, and careers (Morningstar and Clavenna-Deane 2018)." The video is an example of career awareness at the pre-K level.

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Baby Learn about Professions:  Community Helpers - Educational app for kids

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Learning how to match interest and skills with a career is  essential in career exploration.

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Learning work related skills through on the job experiences.

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Program Gives Students with Special Needs Real World Job Experience

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This video represents how schools help students to develop career awareness. Career awareness begins in preschool and should continue through middle school and helps students focus on discovering jobs and careers (Morningstar & Clavenna, 2018).

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Fun Video Clip Highlighting Career Exploration for Middle Schooler

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Fun Video Clip Highlighting Career Exploration for Middle Schooler

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This video clip takes a fun, animated approach to present the idea of career exploration. As part of a career development program, the school district had students identify a career path by visiting local businesses and speaking with workers in various fields. Some schools require 8th graders to develop an individual career plan such as that featured in this video (Morningstar & Clavenna).

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Chameleon Video Scribes & Whiteboard Animation

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Middle school students have to complete a career exploration project for school. (English Subtitles)

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This video clip is an example of a career fair at a middle school in Denver, Colorado. Students in the video discuss how they benefit from the career fair, and they mention benefits such as learning about different businesses, careers, and skills that are required for specific jobs. Career awareness helps students who are in preschool through middle school learn more about work, jobs, and careers (Morningstar and Clavenna, 2018). A career or job fair allows students to learn and become aware of many types of jobs and careers all at one event.

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Job Hunting Starts in Middle School at 8th Grade Career Fair

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This video describes what career and technical education programs and classes are and how they benefit students.  The video further details how career and tech ed classes also benefit employers and how they can lead to internships, apprenticeships, and other on-the-job experiences. The National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability (2016) indicated that "career and technical education programs that are based on professional and industry standards" (p. 4) should be available to students with disabilities as part of school-based preparatory experiences.

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High SchoolWork Based Learning Program: Preparation for Future Employment

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High SchoolWork Based Learning Program: Preparation for Future Employment

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This video clip exemplifies a successful predictor to improve postsecondary outcomes for students with disabilities.  We know from Dr. Mazzotti that there is a correlation between an in-school work experience and positive post-school success.  This clip demonstrates career preparation and the value of work-place experiences for high school students with disabilities.

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Pathways to the Future - Work-Based Learning Experiences

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Work-Based Learning Experiences help you connect what you're learning in school with real-life jobs and potential careers. These experiences can occur in-school or after school. Work-based learning experiences allow you to learn about and try different jobs. Work experience includes unpaid job placements, where people explore a variety of jobs, as well as paid placements that offer more in-depth experience in particular jobs.

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Encouraging Participation in STEM Fields

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Encouraging Participation in STEM Fields

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The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are some of the fastest growing and require qualified persons to fill positions. According to the Office of Disability Employment Policy, 2008, people with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM fields. Consistent with the President's Committee for Employment of People with Disabilities and the High School/High Tech program (Luecking p. 21), this video demonstrates the partnership between STEM professionals in the community and high schools to engage students with disabilities interested in STEM with internships.

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STEM and People with Disabilities: DO-IT Video

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Opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are plentiful. Ensuring that students with disabilities have equal access to STEM academic programs and careers is critical. Learn how the accessibility of STEM activities can be increased and how students with disabilities can prepare for these fields of study and employment.

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Career exploration often begins in elementary school, continuing through secondary educational settings, and provides students an opportunity to gain meaningful work experience (Morningstar & Clavenna-Deane, 2018). In the video linked below, students enrolled in the Pathways program are assuming real responsibilities, solving problems, and are acquiring marketable skills. Career exploration allows students to experience a variety of career options through job rotation, job shadowing and mentorships, and receive training in resume development and interview skills. These work-based experiences are preparing them to enter the workforce, shifting their mentality from finding any job, to beginning a career (Morningstar & Clavenna-Deane, 2018).

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The relationship between quality apprenticeships and the development of a skilled workforce.

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The relationship between quality apprenticeships and the development of a skilled workforce.

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Colorado educators are contributing to the development of a skilled workforce by establishing community partnerships with local business owners and developing apprenticeship programs for high school juniors and seniors. Students enrolled in apprenticeship programs through their school are earning a minimum wage, or more, and are gaining invaluable experience in a variety of contexts. This educational model has provided students and business owners a platform for collaboration, establishing mentorships, and lending to the development of achievable post-secondary goals (Luecking, 2009; Morningstar & Clavenna-Deane, 2018).

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Colorado leaders are painfully aware that they need to find skilled workers to fill thousands of jobs. And they're betting big on their new secret weapon: an apprenticeship program for high school students.

This fall, 116 teenagers from four districts have fanned out to 40 companies in Colorado in the inaugural year of the state's apprenticeship program. Three days a week, the junior and senior students are at school, and two days a week, they're earning minimum wage or more while they learn the ins and outs of finance, information technology, business operations, or advanced manufacturing.

Colorado has a grand vision for the outcome of this project: By 2026, 20,000 apprentices from all across the state will have finished high school with transferable college credit, at least one postsecondary credential, three years of work experience, and in most cases, an associate degree.

The program fits into an expanding national conversation about how schools can do a better job with the career side of the well-known mantra "college- and career-readiness." A changing economy demands a workforce with sophisticated technical skills, and at least some training or education after high school.

Even with low national unemployment, many jobs are going unfilled as companies search for the talent with the skills they need. Searching for answers, policymakers are encouraging schools to use internships, work-based learning, and apprenticeships to expose young people to career ideas and build work experience. President Donald Trump is likewise urging high schools to offer apprenticeships.

In Colorado, the aim is to arm students with general work skills like good communication and time management, which can pay off in a wide variety of jobs, and industry-specific skills like software development or accounting. Each apprenticeship is based on a curriculum developed jointly by business, colleges, and K-12 schools.

The goal is to better position students to save time and money in college and compete for jobs and to supply a bigger pool of skilled workers for Colorado companies.

"We literally have tens of thousands of jobs every week that go unfilled," said Ellen Golombek, the executive director of Colorado's labor and employment department, which helped shape the apprenticeship program. "We're taking a look at the entire work-based-learning spectrum to train, retrain, and 'upskill' the workforce to meet our current and projected needs."

Colorado officials are also hoping to not-so- subtly make another point: Apprenticeships aren't just for young people aspiring to traditional trade jobs like plumbing or electrical work.

Byoncé Reyna illustrates that point. The Denver 16-year-old hopes to be an elementary school teacher. But she's over-the-top excited about her apprenticeship at an insurance company. Since early August, she's been working two days a week at Pinnacol Assurance, which provides worker-compensation policies.

"Insurance is not exactly what I want to do in my life, but knowing how to take on tasks, how to work and thrive in a business environment, will help me in whatever I do," she said.

Her apprenticeship has brought a bachelor's degree within her reach, the 11th grader said.

"Coming from a single-parent household, college is really a stressful topic," said Byoncé, whose mother works at an auto-financing company.

"With all the debt, it seemed like a crazy idea. But now that I can get halfway through college with no debt and a paid position, it's mind-blowing. It's more than I could ask for at such a young age."

In her first few weeks at Pinnacol, Byoncé started with workplace skills, such as learning the Microsoft Office suite of computer tools, and, as she puts it, "how to maintain this young-professional persona and make sure people know we mean business."

Now, under the watchful eye of a Pinnacol adviser, she's rotating through underwriting, claims adjustment, and other departments. Over the next three years, Byoncé, a junior, will try her hand at various posts, spending more time at work, and less on her high school campus, as she gets closer to graduation.

By her third year, she'll be taking community college classes and working three or four days a week at Pinnacol, building expertise in one specific area of the company.

Twenty-two other apprentices are working at Pinnacol, too. They all learn the 26 workplace competencies Colorado has built into the program, such as being a self-starter, teamwork, and thinking logically. But beyond that, they will find unique niches in the company as they rotate through various departments.

Some might gravitate toward working with clients over the phone, and others might take a shine to underwriting. Still others might choose to build their technology skills by developing content for Pinnacol's website, said Mark Tapy, who is overseeing the company's apprenticeship program.

Wading into the program is no small matter for companies. Pinnacol has agreed to pay 23 apprentices $9.60 per hour for two full days a week and as much as $12 or $15 per hour, three days a week, as they progress through the program.

Participating companies also pay $2,000 to $5,000 per apprentice for their courses at community colleges and other training providers.

There's also the time and effort of writing the curriculum, which lays out specific weekly goals, and supervising teenagers as they learn. Pinnacol's is a blend of general workplace competencies agreed upon by business, K-12, and higher education, and an insurance-specific course it developed with The Institutes, an organization that confers credentials for the insurance industry.

The way Pinnacol sees it, the effort is worth the payoff. The company and the industry nationwide anticipate a big wave of retirements in the coming decade, Tapy said, so Pinnacol can't just wait around to see what happens.

"We're trying to create a new talent-acquisition strategy for our organization, and our industry, to ensure that we retain some of the institutional knowledge we've had," he said.

These kinds of economic shifts were on the minds of leaders in Colorado's business and education sectors as they started to explore the apprenticeship idea last year. Led by Gov. John Hickenlooper, they organized a trip to Switzerland, where 40 percent of companies offer apprenticeships in more than 200 professions. About 70 percent of Swiss students participate in the world-renowned program.

They learned that companies make a net profit on their apprenticeship investments. Over three years, a Swiss economics professor told the delegation, companies spend $86,000 on average on each apprentice but get contributions valued at $95,000.

Research shows that Swiss students who take part in apprenticeships have lower unemployment and higher earnings than peers who stick to the exclusively academic track. Apprentices don't end up stuck with their early job choices, either; Swiss research shows that later occupational changes are common.

With the Swiss system as a model, Colorado began planning its program as a way to keep students in the school pipeline, set them up for good jobs, and serve industry's need for a skilled workforce. It decided to put businesses in the driver's seat, using their needs as a starting point.

"If they're not at the table, if they can't tell us what they need, we're flying blind" in trying to provide it, said Golombek, the state labor and employment director.

The state chose four focus areas for the apprenticeship program-finance, information technology, advanced manufacturing, and business operations-based on which businesses expressed interest in being part of the new system, she said. But they also had to be areas with high growth potential in Colorado's economy.

A nonprofit organization, CareerWise Colorado, coordinates the many moving parts of the system. The organization convenes conversations with business and education to define apprenticeship competencies and figure out how to monitor and assess students' progress.

It works with K-12 schools to infuse career exploration and specific career skills into coursework.

And it's working with the state's two- and four-year colleges to create articulation agreements that guarantee that students can transfer the credits they earn in the program.

"This requires new thinking, new models, and new partnerships, but this is a new economy," said Kim Hunter Reed, the executive director of Colorado's department of higher education.

The project has pushed education and business into a new, positive kind of relationship, said Gretchen Morgan, CareerWise Colorado's president.

"In the United States, it's hard for business and schools to have a practical way to be connected to each other to ensure that schools know enough about changing industry to be responsive," she said. "When they share responsibility for apprentices, they have this very practical way to be in touch about the relevant competencies."

Colorado has set ambitious goals for its initiative, and national experts are watching to see how it unfolds. One such expert sees big challenges ahead.

"The biggest challenge is getting employers to seriously play in this game," said Robert B. Schwartz, who leads the Pathways to Prosperity Network, a group of states that work on career-readiness policies with Harvard University and Jobs for the Future.

In the United States, employers tend to "wait around to see what shows up on their doorstep," while Swiss companies "get in at the front end" and help shape the education system so it produces the talent pool they need, said Schwartz, who has studied the Swiss apprenticeship system.

Creating a nationwide Swiss-style apprenticeship system would require that big shift in thinking from U.S. companies, he said.

And it would demand a radical restructuring of high schools that Schwartz said he doubts most schools would embrace: a "lower secondary" and "upper secondary" model, in which students spend the first two years on academics and career readiness, and the second evenly divided between work and study.

Published in Print: September 27, 2017, as Colorado Goes All In on Apprentices

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Can Apprenticeships Pave the Way to a Better Economic Future?

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Colorado leaders are painfully aware that they need to find skilled workers to fill thousands of jobs. And they're betting big on their new secret weapon: an apprenticeship program for high school students. This fall, 116 teenagers from four districts have fanned out to 40 companies in Colorado in the inaugural year of the state's apprenticeship program.

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Shadowing or immersion allows students to sample or be exposed to a speicific kind of work for a company. (Luecking,Richard, 2009).  It also allows students to see what their degree may allow them to do in the "real world."

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Student Perspective: Why You Should Go On An Immersion

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Career assessments enable students to participate in an ongoing process of collecting information about their interests, likes and strenghts. Traditional and formal assessments include standardized tests and those available from commercial publishers.( Luecking, Richard, 2009).

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How to Choose a Career Based on Interests - The Strong Interest Inventory Assessment

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Project SEARCH: career fairs and commitment to exploring individual interests

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Project SEARCH: career fairs and commitment to exploring individual interests

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Since its inception, Project SEARCH’s primary objective has been to assist individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities secure competitive employment. One way this transition-to-work program assists individuals with securing meaningful, competitive employment is through promoting career awareness. Career awareness often beings in elementary school, continuing through secondary educational settings, and is achieved through career assessments, hosting guest speakers, structured field trips, and career fairs (Morningstar & Clavenna-Deane, 2018). The video linked below is an example of a career fair. Career fairs allow individuals to gauge their interest in variety of prospective fields by providing an opportunity to learn about work conditions and test individual capabilities (Morningstar & Clavenna-Deane).

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LA VISTA, Neb. (KMTV) - Students with disabilities got hands-on experience from 63 area employers during the Omaha Project Search job fair.

They learned about appropriate social media use, dressing for success, and practiced interview skills.

The job fair is specifically designed to provide students with disabilities job exploration, workplace readiness training, and self-advocacy.

"Students are able to try their hand at the different skills that it takes to see if that's where their interest lies," said Sara Hansen of Nebraska Department of Education Vocational Rehabilitation.

Everything from detailing a car, housekeeping, and learning how to package a Runza Sandwich.

"It's actually pretty great," Rocky Pafford, North Platte Senior said. "There's drones, you can learn about cars, computers, 3D printing."

Pafford said after graduation, he is going to job corps; but Monday helped spark some of his interests.

"Especially with the 3D printing and drone area," Pafford said. "Honestly they don't but I'm thinking about setting up one myself."

The fair also helps employers see the student's skills.

"When we talk about students with disabilities we have a different picture in our head," Hansen said. "We don't realize what an asset they are to the company, especially in a state that has 2.8-percent unemployment rate. These students are at the top of having that desire to work."

Project Search helps students year round get the training and education they need for successful careers.

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Students with disabilities explore skills at job fair

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LA VISTA, Neb. (KMTV) - Students with disabilities got hands-on experience from 63 area employers during the Omaha Project Search job fair. They learned about appropriate social media use, dressing for success, and practiced interview skills. The job fair is specifically designed to provide students with disabilities job exploration, workplace readiness training, and self-advocacy.

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Allowing students to emerse themselves in a development/mentorship program can and will lead to successful post school outcomes.  The quality work experience and most effective chance for long term employment  are those where students are learning during high schoo.l ( Morningstar, Clavenna-Deane,2018).

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Teaching those with disabilities to reach their dreams.

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Being able to comunicate to the employer and for yourself is an essentail skill that all students need to learn. Skills to Pay the Bills is a currciculum that focusses on essential work related skills that will need to be developed, refined and practiced throghout high school. (Morningstar, Clavenna-Deane 2018).

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Career planning and experiences have always been a component of transition programs for students with disabilities, with participation in learning as one of the most significant predictors fo employment success. (Morningstar & Clavenna-Deane p. 147) Career Exploration activities provide youth with the opportunity to explore fields of interest related to their career goals and or academic planning. (New Ways to Work www.newwaystowork.org )

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Academic and Career Planning Video Scribe

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The activities presented in this video show the incorrect and correct way to flow through the whole process with "getting the job and keeping the job". Presented by stduents; this shows self-determination in the planning and behavior of the workplace. (Luecking, Richard. 2009).

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When students are ready to engage in work-based learning, a well-designed model of support for each students success is needed (Morningstar & Clavenna-Deane p. 160). Students working in Project Search receive training and job opportunities for individuals with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 22.

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Project Search: New Pathways for Young Adults with Disabilities

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This video show students why it is important to work, and shows that when they are hired, it provides adults with meaningful life rewards through work. According to Luecking p. 101, employers will fill their needs by hiring individuals with disabilities helps the business to meet deadlines and satisfy customers, fills job openings and meets a community need, such as helping youth become productive citizens.

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People with Developmental Disabilities WORK

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Students learn and become aware of a wide variety of jobs and careers (Career Development Continuum www.newaystowork.org ) This video shows several jobs that are available that many children or young adults are interested in and explains the education they need and what each career person may do.

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When I Grow Up...? 10 Cool Jobs For Kids