Teaching Children About Work and Career

This is another paper I did for another counseling course I had taken a while ago called 'Career and Lifestyle Counseling'. It received a good grade of an 'A-'. This is a course that teaches and shows how a career can shape us and it covers the various theories that can affect our choice(s) of what we want to be and how we go about choosing what we want to do with out lives.

To begin teaching children about work and choosing a career is a job for parents and teachers. When the children are at home the parents should start teaching their children about building respect for things and people around them. They need to learn about cultures (their own and others). The parents and teachers of younger children should start with activities that teach about acceptance and character. These lessons should involve family in some way.

When working as a teacher or counselor discussions can be about the world of work and how it effects the children's parents and immediate family like siblings. We can teach them about the community around them and teach character issues like compassion, cohesion, and cooperation with everyone involved in their world. We can teach and show what it means to work together in various capacities.

In this way you can find out what interests they like to pursue and the possible careers that those interests can lead to in the future. The counselor must acknowledge what the student shares with the group (Clark, 2002). In teaching about culture the counselor should involve the parents, teachers and community workers that effect each child, if possible for each culture has its' own way of sharing work experiences. Parents can show the children the proper way to dress. They can show them the difference between work and career clothes as it pertains to the work they have chosen to do. With different cultures people wear what is appropriate with their beliefs. For example, most Arab business workers wear their traditional headdress with a traditional business suit. We can teach students to accept these ways and lead to approval and conformity dealing with other cultures. Parents and schools will teach proper choices for students to learn and to be able to find commonalities with all the different cultures around them if possible in their areas. The children should be able to share their own culture as well. Children share culture in many ways through cooking, art, music, and how they work with others (Pollack, 1999).

All of this fits into the world of careers in the following ways. Most of the time in the classroom the teacher keeps telling students that school is their work, which is true, and that they must obey the rules, conform to society or give up the chance to get what they want when they become adults. In a very general sense, the lessons about the world of work in a Pre-school or Kindergarten classroom would be simply by asking what does your father and/or mother do for a living outside the family household?

This could be shown in artwork, circle time, or dramatic play activities. You as the counselor could possibly as the children what other family members could be involved like aunts, uncles, cousins or even grandparents. After the immediate family is discussed you could ask them when in school what kind of jobs do you see in this school.

In the First and Second grades the teacher and/or counselor will work with members of the community like nurses, higher level teachers, janitors and other professions, and what they do to get along with the community at large. Now, in the Third and Fourth grades you will bring more detail to the idea of career interests that they may have and start to describe what possible careers or jobs could be a match for them. You can remind that these choices that they make now are not permanent they will change their minds several times over their school years. At this time the students may want to be like their parents or some other family member or even someone else they look up to as fitting their interests. Further, in the Fifth and Sixth grades you as the counselor and the teacher can share ideas for possible summer jobs that could teach them responsibility and cooperation with family, other cultures, and the community they live in at the present time.

When working with children at various levels of development and the world of jobs and careers you must remember that there maybe some students who may have jobs already and be able to use these skills in a future position like, for example, future teachers could be babysitters, future journalists could be newspaper delivery boys, lawn cutters could become landscapers. When you ask them about this and why they have to work they will just say they need to help their mother and/or father for you may be helping a disadvantaged child and family. This could be a good time for the counselor to talk about the different levels of careers and the kind of training that may be needed and still fit in with their interests. You can start with the semi-skilled jobs and the skilled jobs then move on to civil service positions, and then move on to the professional level of careers. In teaching about careers and how to get one, counselors must also explain about how people can lose their jobs and how to start over, so children will not think that once they make one decision that will not be the only one they will make for the rest of their working lives. You can tell them that the basic skills they learn in school and the small beginning jobs they hold can be of use in their future career goals. You can ask them if maybe volunteering could help them out with career interests or even help the parents get off to a new start for a new job. In this world we live in one must be creative in the ways we survive to pay our bills and to show our children how to help the community.

In teaching children about respect for others in looking for possible careers or just even a job to help themselves or their family. You must show them that they are worth something and they can share their skills, values and interests while in school and on the job when they get one.

To be continued- Developmental Theories