Bryan High School students have plenty of options to explore possible career paths.
One of those ways is through the Elevate and Explore Career Fair on Oct. 23.
Karyn Cox, Bryan City School District’s director of teaching and learning, said recently the fair is “hands-on, engaged and explorative.”
She worked with the Williams County Economic Development Corp. (WEDCO) for the fair.
“Last year was the first year I worked with WEDCO, which was huge, huge because of their connection to businesses,” she said. “Our goal for this year is 75 businesses.”
Businesses will be invited from all over the region, not just Williams County, Cox said, adding businesses from Toledo have expressed interest.
After talking to the businesses last year, the fair was expanded to include juniors and seniors, Cox said.
“We would love for eighth graders to join, but with one day and countywide we just don’t have the space for eighth graders and the businesses thought seniors and juniors would be more beneficial,” she said.
Instead, eighth graders will have other resources for teachers to work with workplace exposure, Cox said.
In addition to the fair, she is working to get a better, uniform career assessment.
“Last year, I did a survey K-12 on career assessment because I knew we didn’t give one career assessment as a district,” Cox said. “It came back that teachers were doing surveys, but nothing followed the students and there wasn’t much collaboration among the teachers.”
That’s how she found a program called Future Plans.
It’s a career assessment that comes with coaching and is free with a grant, Cox said.
“Bryan will be the first school in northwest Ohio to participate,” she said. “Students will discover their strengths, interests and will get to work one-on-one with a career coach to establish a plan moving forward.”
Cox wants the seniors to get through the assessment by the job fair.
However, all of them won’t be able to be coached by then.
“What I mean by coached is they’re going to learn their top five where they fit best in a career,” she said. “The coaching will help them, ‘OK here’s your number three choice, what are your interests there? Does this fit with what you’re looking for?’”
It takes two-and-half hours to go through the assessment, Cox added, though students won’t have to go through the whole process at once.
When completed, Future Plans will show three career choices and will contain an interest and abilities profile.
“Students will have access to the portal through high school and beyond,” Cox said. “Even when they graduate, they will be able to go back to the career assessment and utilize this career assessment.”
She and Stephen Alspaugh, high school principal, will have a parent meeting to discuss the assessment on Sept. 10.
In addition, Cox said the district is looking into the Clifton Strengths Assessment.
“The Clifton Strengths Assessment is used in 90% of Fortune 500 companies and is specifically designed for ages 15 and up and it’s to complement Future Plans,” she said.
“The assessment measures unique talents, natural patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.”
This will help students to learn their strengths and also how to work with others on their strengths.
Cox said she is working on getting a grant for the program.
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