In this interactive lesson, you will learn about job projections and outlook, factors that impact job demand, such as changes in technology, demographics, business practices or production methods, consumer preferences, and workplace restructuring, and explore the importance of reviewing your career plan based upon the demand for the career that interests you!

Workplace skills that are not specific to one career are often called soft skills or transferable skills. These are the skills that you would need to navigate most workplaces.  In this lesson, you will begin by recording your current use of transferable skills in your part-time job, volunteer, extra curricular, hobbies, and/or classroom activities and will identify the importance of these skills in your future career. Once you’ve reflected upon your current use of a few key transferable skills, you will then update the skills included in your About Me profile.

Even if you’re not sure you’ll be heading to a technical college or four-year college or university your first year after high school, you never know where your future career will  take  you.  It  may be later in your career that you decide that additional education is necessary to advance you in your field.  So why not start thinking about potential schools that  would make a good fit for you?  In this activity, you’ll explore schools in Xello to help you identify factors that you feel are important in your postsecondary education goals, saving at least 3 schools and identifying the factors that influenced your selections. 

In this Xello interactive lesson, you’ll explore your feelings about post-secondary education and will rank the factors that are most important to you when selecting technical or 4-year colleges/universities that are a good fit for you.  You will rank these factors and will compare how the colleges that you have saved in your profile stack up to what you feel is most important.  

In case you aren’t familiar with the term, an entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates their own business. In this lesson, you will identify the skills and characteristics that make entrepreneurs successful, investigate paths to becoming an entrepreneur (e.g. starting your own business, buying a franchise, etc.). You will also explore characteristics and skills that you’ve developed that demonstrate your entrepreneurial spirit!

In this Xello interactive lesson, you will identify the skills and characteristics that make entrepreneurs successful,  investigate paths to becoming an entrepreneur, and explore the benefits and challenges of  becoming an entrepreneur.

Even when you are doing a job which you don’t intend to stay in forever, you’re building your employability skills. Employability skills are those skills which are transferable to other careers and which may help you to advance in your career. These could be academic skills like communication and basic math skills, or they may be personal characteristics such as critical thinking skills, promptness, and adaptability. In this 8th grade Job Skills lesson, students will investigate the skills and personal characteristics which are transferable from one occupation to another.

This 7th grade Biases and Career Choices lesson leads students through a comparison of two careers in the Xello platform.

This 7th grade Jobs and Employers lesson leads students through an exploration of a company in the Inspire portion of the Xello platform.

The purpose of this activity is for students to complete a half or full day job shadow in the chosen career field, interview, and submit reflection paper.

• I can complete the Skills Lab assessment to identify skills that I want to use in my future career
• I can reflect upon the skills that I currently have that will be useful in my future career and explore options for developing the skills that I need to gain in the future

• I can evaluate explore careers that are a good match for me based upon my Skills Lab results
• I can update my saved careers based upon the skills that I prefer to use

• I can identify and reflect upon skills that I may need in my career
• I can identify skills that I am practicing today that I may use in my future career
• I can identify skills that I need to develop

• I can identify experiences that helped me develop a work-related skill
• I can add work experiences (volunteering, joining a club, playing a sport, part-time work) that I have gained that connect to building workplace readiness skills and knowledge

• I can add work-based learning opportunities available through my school that I am interested in pursuing to the Career Goals on My Plan
• I can add part-time work experiences that I will pursue during high school to the Career Goals on My Plan

• I can explain what resilience is and why it is important to achieve success
• I can identify skills, habits, and behaviors that are needed to be successful in high school and beyond

• I can identify the skills, habits, and behaviors needed to be successful in high school
• I can identify potential obstacles to success in high school
• I can develop a personal plan for developing positive student habits and minimize negative influences on my success

• I can identify my learning style
• I can identify and develop learning strategies that work best with my learning style
• I can utilize these strategies to develop resilience and perseverance in courses that are challenging

• I can think realistically about how I did on an assignment or task
• I can develop a strategy or learn how to improve in the future
• I can explain why resilience and perseverance are important to different areas of my life in and out of school
• I can complete a self-assessment to rate myself on resilience and perseverance
• I can reflect on what I’ve learned about careers this year