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Part Three in Dan's Career Symposium
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Career Decision Making for Students in Grades 11 and 12
by Dan Lukiv
"[Grade 12] students will complete a minimum of 30 hours of learning experience in the community" (Introduction, 1995, p. 7) Absolute experience teaches absolutely, aye? I remember, at 16, trying to tie up a scow to a dock on the Fraser River. I was having trouble, as usual, figuring out the best knot to use. The skipper had the tugboat, with its diesel motor raging, rammed against the scow, trying to keep it from slipping backwards down river.
"Hurry up!" he yelled.
"How do I tie that knot?" I wondered. "Why do I get so nervous? Why can't I remember what I'm supposed to do?!"
The scow did slip down river. The skipper circled the tug around before the scow had wandered too far, but he was not pleased. He stood on the wheel house, at the auxiliary steering wheel, and swore at me. I botched another attempt to tie the blinkin' thing up, and he had to circle the tugboat around again.
I can still see him. He pulled at his hair, jumped up and down, and screamed, "You stupid *!#@$&!! kid! You stupid *!#@$&!! kid!" He looked like Rumplestiltskin.
I told myself, "I've gotta find another line of work."
I didn't pursue a career on tugboats, at least not for much longer. I had benefited from my "learning experience in the community." I learned I needed to pursue work that required no mechanical aptitude.
Grade 11 and 12 students, like myself on that tugboat, are encouraged to "examine how their own interests, aptitudes, and qualifications...match the demands of the various careers and occupations they investigate" (Introduction, 1995, p. 7). This career decision making should help them aim their energy in a productive direction. Work experience, in short, should help them to at least begin to discover what they like versus what they dislike.
Those discoveries mean a lot for "students...living in a time of rapid change, both globally and locally. They need to explore some of the changes that are currently taking place in the workplace and to learn how to [make sensible career choices]" (Introduction, 1995, p. 7). Classes, assignments [which could include job shadowing], and work experience provide that exploration. We call it part of Career and Personal Planning (CAPP) 11/12, which certainly extends far beyond the guidance classes I took in high school.
Aside from our guidance teacher, over thirty years ago, telling our class of boys, "If you don't notice any changes in your body, go see a doctor," "Wear deodorant. It's no longer considered manly to smell like a horse," and "Try to find a job that matches your interests," I don't recall much career-related direction or exploration with regard to decision making.1
A great body of exploration, however, exists within CAPP 11/12. For example, it directs students to "assess and evaluate the contributions of various types of work" (Introduction, 1995, p. 141). In different words, this exploration addresses students' "tentative phase in which choices are narrowed but not finalized" (Zunker, 1998, p. 32). Note the need for decision making?
The informed teacher bases this exploration on theoretical precedents: "Beginning at age 14�introspective thinking promotes greater self-awareness and perceptions of others" (Zunker, 1998, p. 46). By age 17 students display "integration of capacities and interests [complemented by] further development of values" (p. 29). Exploration, introspection, integration, and value development, combined with the senior high school student's new-found "ability to deal with distractions and sort out problems through mental manipulations [career decision making]," provide him with the perfect variables to benefit from CAPP 11/12 objectives (p. 213).
Here is one objective: The student "demonstrate[s] an ability to make informed choices about the prevention of injury to themselves and others" (Appendix A, 1995, p. 137). Real life examples help students evaluate the safe or unsafe features of a work environment. I remember my first tugboat skipper explaining to me the dangers of the steel tow line, and how it can pin a man to the rim of the stern and slice him in two or sever an arm or leg in a moment. I definitely used my problem-solving skills to avoid that tow line. In Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada, pre-apprenticeship students formally work through a Workers' Compensation package that teaches them how to avoid danger. They learn problem-solving skills that translate into career decision-making skills. "How can I keep my arms and legs and fingers intact?" and "Do I really want to pursue this career with its associated safety risks?" For example, "Do I really want to be a high rigger?"
CAPP 11/12 helps students decide what careers "fit," in terms of "how their attributes, accomplishments, interests, and skills relate to career interests and opportunities" (Appendix A, 1995, p. 139). This sort of evaluation is a high level form of thinking that, to use my own words, "should help them aim their energy in a productive direction." Some call this a discussion of person-environment-congruence, which relates not only to who a person is, but to "job satisfaction[, which] should be evaluated according to several factors, including satisfaction with co-workers and supervisors, type of work, autonomy, responsibility, and opportunities for self-expression of ability and for serving others" (Zunker, 1998, p. 26).
The career decision-making skills therein, related to a good person-environment fit, are invaluable. So is decision-making based on "changes taking place in the economy, environment, society, and the job market" (Appendix A, 1995, p. 141). Some relate this to a sociological perspective of work and career development. You might say this is where the decision-making "gets real." Many factors, like personal circumstances, societal needs, and governmental thrusts, to name a few, mean that "a satisfying career is not necessarily one that has been planned but is more a matter of obtaining a preferred position when the opportunity presents itself" (Zunker, 1998, p. 64).
And then, of course, there is money. Post secondary training requires bucks. CAPP 11/12 helps students "relate personal finances to their career and personal plans" (Appendix A, 1995, p. 143). Money-related decisions can send one person down one path, another down a very different one. Robert Frost speaks in "The Road Not Taken" about "Two roads [that] diverged in a yellow wood, / And [about how he was] sorry [he] could not travel both." He ends by saying "[He] took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference" (Frost, 1976, pp. 177-178). A student loan versus saving up first. On the job training versus apprenticeship schooling. Spending that summer-earned money on a trip to Europe versus using it to start college in September.
CAPP 11/12 = what roads should I consider, what roads should I avoid. That translates into career decision making. In the hands of a capable, inspired teacher, this excellent program could help his students acquire many career decision-making skills: "Career values, interests, identity, and behaviors [can be] constructed�through language in conversation with others" (Zunker, 1998, p. 84). Rather than students just, as Jennifer says in "A Career Counseling Interview," "fill[ing] things [forms] out" in CAPP classes (paragraph 18), a dynamic interchange between students and teacher should enable students to "construct their own way of organizing information" that will benefit them long after graduation (Zunker, 1998, p. 83).
On a personal level, the teacher could help the student crystallise problem-solving skills. Consider "the zone of proximal development. It is the distance between the actual development as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). CAPP provides a wonderful forum for such potential development with regard to career problem-solving skills. CAPP, as I said, "in the hands of a capable, inspired teacher...could help his students acquire many career decision-making skills."
Footnote
- Here is a general format for decision making:
Decision making can be thought of as a series of steps: (a) set the goal;
(b) figure out alternative ways of reaching the goal; (c) get accurate
information to determine which alternative is best; (d) decide on an
alternative and carry it out; (e) figure out if the choice was correct and
why; and (f) if you did not reach the goal, try another alternative or start
the process over again. (Zunker, 1998, p. 250)
