The initiative will provide schools with career exploration software.
Funded by the Toyota USA Foundation and created by the National Dropout Prevention Center, the software is designed to enhance students’ experiences as they plan for their future careers.
The software package includes four components: ACT prep, job-readiness assessment prep, soft skills training and career exploration.
The program will be rolled out in four schools in Northeast Mississippi: Saltillo High School, New Albany High School, Pontotoc High School and North Pontotoc High School.
Although the state department of education has been encouraging career readiness through smaller programs for a while now, this initiative is the most comprehensive, most structured yet.
Mike Mulvihill, director of career and technical education at the MDE, said the software helps students navigate career choices and requirements so they can set goals for themselves and keep looking ahead.
Regardless of what a student’s next steps are, Mulvihill said, they will eventually have a job, and they need to be prepared for it.
“It’s one thing to just tick things off a list, but it’s another to have a goal in mind,” Mulvihill said. “As they get interested in things, it keeps them focused on what they’re going to school for.”
Students also will work on skills like communication, teamwork and interviewing skills. Additionally, they will be taught how to dress professionally and manage their time, all through the software.
“Just getting a diploma in today’s society and today’s economy isn’t really going to prepare them for the next level,” Mulvihill said.
For Mulvihill and others at MDE, it’s all about preparing students early on to make career-related decisions.
“If you want to be an engineer, it’s really hard to wait until your senior year to say, ‘I need to take physics and calculus,’ and then you have to pick those things up in college,” Mulvihill said.
The MDE has been working with principals at the participating schools to implement the program.
The push for teaching career-ready skills in middle and high schools has been growing in the Northeast Mississippi region recently.
Last year, with the help of the Toyota Wellspring Education Fund, the CREATE Foundation hosted the first “Imagine the Possibilities” career expo. The two-day event brought more than 3,300 eighth graders from seven counties to the BancorpSouth Arena.
In addition, middle school students in many districts take classes designed to expose them to career options, and Toyota and local community colleges have programs that seek to educate and attract students to manufacturing jobs.
©2016 the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo, Miss.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
