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Career Exploration in the Classroom
Career exploration exposes students to future careers, helps them identify and follow through on an education path that leads to a desired career, and encourages them to strive academically. The resources below can help you bring career exploration into the classroom so students can focus on their future and see why study is important.

General
Entrepreneurship
Service Learning
Project Based Learning

General

General resources for incorporating career themes and skills into classroom lessons.

Balancing Life & Work, Volume I (NWREL, 2001)
Guide that highlights projects nationwide aimed at incorporating career development into humanities coursework. Includes relevant resources and planning worksheets. Balancing Life & Work, Volume II features six case studies in California schools where teachers have successfully woven career development themes into humanities courses.

Making the School-to-Work Connection (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2000-2004)
Tips for teachers on incorporating career themes into the classroom to help students make the connection between their studies and their future.

Career Education: Setting Your Students on the Path to a Valued Vocation (Education World, 2000)
Article on how one teacher developed a project to help her students focus on careers and their future after hearing a student say that "only rich people go to college." Includes additional resources for teachers on including career themes in academic subjects.

Curriculum and Instructional Support, Career and Technical Education (New York State Department of Education, Ongoing)
Website with information and resources for incorporating career and technical education into the classroom, as required under New York's Standards of Learning. Although focused on New York, these materials can also help teachers in other states.

Entrepreneurship

Many young people dream of starting and running their own business. Through entrepreneurship education, students can develop the academic and career skills they need to follow through on their dream.

Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education
Background information, free teaching materials, and network resources pertaining to entrepreneurship education.

National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship
"NFTE's mission is to teach entrepreneurship to low-income young people, ages 11 through 18, so they can become economically productive members of society by improving their academic, business, technology and life skills." The website includes a section for educators, with teaching materials and information on the "NFTE University" training programs.

Future Entrepreneurs (Council for Economic Development, North Carolina)
Encourages entrepreneurship education in North Carolina by providing curriculum and assistance to teachers who would like to incorporate the principles of entrepreneurship into their classrooms. Based in the North Carolina Research Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill).

Service Learning

Service learning ties classroom learning to community projects, helping students see connections with the broader community and encouraging them to think critically about their studies.

Service-Learning, Making a Difference (Peace Corps)
Website for teachers that describes service learning, sets out standards for service learning, shares ideas for getting started on projects, provides lesson plans and includes links to additional resources.

Service Learning, Teachers' Information (idealist.org)
Website with information on service-learning, including examples and curricula.

Service Learning (Children for Children)
Information on service learning, including tools and guides for teachers who want to incorporate service learning into the classroom.

Project Based Learning

Project based learning (PBL) encourages students to explore topics in depth through research and experiments, often conducted in the world outside the classroom.

Project-based Learning (George Lucas Educational Foundation, Ongoing)
Website with information and resources on project-based learning, including articles, profiles of schools and projects, interviews with experts, an outline for developing your own project-based curriculum, examples of student work, suggestions for bringing project-based learning to your school, and an extensive list of additional resources.

PBL-Project-Based Learning (4teachers.org, Ongoing)
Online information on project-based learning, including resources and checklists teachers can use to develop their own projects and monitor students' progress.

Project Based Learning (Buck Institute for Education, Ongoing)
Website with an overview of project based learning, a handbook for teachers that includes a detailed planning model, and an extensive list of additional resources on PBL.