Planning Your Future

Good Morning!




Today's activity is all about who’s hiring and how to get hired! Although the answer might seem obvious, there are a lot of great resources you are about to learn about. From the Occupational Outlook Handbook to developing your personal brand and developing an online professional profile! Below you will find some resources we will be using today in class. At the end of class, I would like you to take 5 minutes to reflect on what you learned today. Please share:

• A few careers you are most interested in pursuing following today's discussion 
• What you plan to do (or can do) to achieve your goal of getting a position in this field 
• The most interesting new information you learned as part of this discussion 

Below you will find a series of images that will help guide our class discussion!

You can navigate these resources and many others by visiting: http://www.bls.gov/k12/content/teachers/pdf/choosing_a_career.pdf ... click on the links that are most interesting and make educated decisions about your future!

California specific: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_ca.htm

Career Interest Profiler

Good Morning and Happy Block Day!

Today, we are not going to kick off the morning with our typical Chapter, Section quiz. Instead, I am going to ask you to take a few minutes of your time to complete a Career Interest Survey and complete a blog post with the information you learn about yourself.

First of all, the career interest survey you will complete is located at:

http://studentcenter.ja.org/Careers/Pages/CareerAssessment.aspx

• Click “New Users Register Here” and Create your account.
• Activation Code = N3235773GYT

After Completing your career assessment you will be given results that indicate the occupations of your highest interest broken into five career pathways. Click on the Career Pathway of interest to you - hopefully you are happy with the one that is ranked #1 for you. For your blog post, please discuss the following:

1. What did you think of the career assessment you took through the JA site?
2. What did you learn about the career pathway designated as most aligned with your interests?
3. What did you find about the different jobs available to you and what education is needed for each?  Discuss job opportunities that require at least 3 different levels of academic preparedness.
4. Discuss the median annual salary listed for the career and how that would fit your desired lifestyle.
5. Research and describe the outlook for the career and whether you think it would be a smart investment of your time and money to study and prepare for a career in this field.  Explain!

Thanks for a thoughtful blog response.  You will be asked to refer back to this blog post on Friday as part of our final discussion with Anthony!!  After completing this Career Assessment and spending a little time researching the career of interest to you, please transition quietly to working on your Home Buying Assignment or your Inside Job Research Paper.

Thank you!

Blog for 4/29

Good Morning and Happy Block Day!!

Today we are going to:

1. Complete a quiz on Chapter 19, Sections 1 & 2.  This is an open book quiz but needs to be completed individually.  You can access the quiz at: http://goo.gl/Fb56nd
2. Begin research of your "Home Buying Project."  Remember to read and follow the directions carefully and refer to the notes you (hopefully) took yesterday as I guided you through each step.  A reminder this project is due no later than May 28th at 1:00PM.  The sooner you submit it, the better.

After completing the quiz, please take a moment to post a blog for today discussing the 3 most interesting things you learned about the characteristics of a developing nation and the process of economic development. Your post should be approximately 6-8 sentences.  In addition to the 2 most interesting things you learned, explain an experience you have had either here in the United States or abroad that offers an example or personal experience of yours with the new knowledge you have gained.

Finally, for the "Home Buying Project" ... many of you asked whether now is a good time to buy a house ... I found the following article which you might find interesting.

Check out: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/28/the-facebook-effect-on-real-estate-prices/#.akhn2c:ZFx8 for the full article

Buying a House!

Good Morning and Happy Tuesday!  As discussed and promised yesterday I am going to present the 2nd of two projects you have to complete before the end of the school year.  The project we are going to begin working on today is all about your future and the possibility of buying a home!!  After all - the American dream supposedly is land, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... well, here's your chance to see what goes into getting yourself some land!!

For today's blog, please discuss the following:

1. Why would you want to own a home at some point in your life?  What are the benefits that you can think of that would come with owning your own home?  What are some of the challenges you can think of that would come with owning your own home?
2. What are some of the features you can think of that you would want in your home?  While answering this question think about location, exterior qualities, interior qualities, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the desire to have (or not have) a yard, etc.  Which features are most important to you and why?
3. Where do you want to live when you get out of High School, College or potentially when you "grow up."  Are you hopeful to live in the bay area?  Close by?  In California?  Wherever the wind blows you?  What are some of the things that interest you about this location versus the many, many other options you have for your future!
4. Lastly, what are you hopeful to learn as part of this project.  What are you most interested in when it comes to your future and the possibility of ownership?  Is there 1 thing in particular you are motivated to own and/or learn how to attain?

Thanks for your thorough, thoughtful response!!

p.s. if you're interested, the house above is listed at the fair price of 23.8 ... million dollars

SPRING BREAK!!! Is over :(

Good Morning, Happy Monday and welcome (believe it or not) to the last week of April and the final stretch of the 2014-15 school year and your high school career.  Next year you will be back to freshman year but no longer as a required high school students but as a college student, choosing to further your academic journey and better your employment outlook for the future!  All said and done, I bet it seems pretty crazy how quickly your high school years went all of a sudden!!

Today we are going to kick off the morning with a quick reflection of the following:

1. How was your Spring Break?  What was the most fun thing you did and what is one reason you are excited to be back at school?
2. How are your grades?  I know it's never something you want to kick off your first morning back at school thinking about BUT you have to get back to reality at some point!  Are they good, bad, ugly?  Which classes are you doing well in?  Which classes do you need to get focused in and really work to improve?
3. Believe it or not, we are a mere 6 weeks until everything is said and done - 5 for you really because Final week for everyone else means Senior week for you.  After graduation, the school year will be over and you will be headed off to summer vacation with hopefully nothing to worry about!  What are your goals between now and then?  Be specific!  What grades do you need to get?  Are you still working on getting stuff lined up for this summer?  Have you registered for your classes for next year and do you know what they are?

That should be enough for today's post BUT keep in mind it should be just a starting point for you to start thinking about success and how you are going to ensure you get there!!  Thanks for your thorough, thoughtful response ;)

Work, Work, Work!

Per our discussion yesterday:

• By Next Friday you must:
• Complete Both Car Assignments 
• The Adventure of Buying a Car: 12 Questions from Cars.com
• Buying Your First Car: A 4 page synopsis of a car you would like to buy and the cost of ownership on both an annual and monthly basis
• Complete your Stock Market Portfolio
• Remember to manage your time well and complete quality work.  Follow all of the directions listed on the handouts carefully.  Double check your work before submitting it. Don't be shy to ask for help.

This will be our agenda, nothing more - nothing less, between now and Spring Break.  In addition, I will refrain from assigning any blogs these next two weeks.

Happy Monday, Welcome Back and An Outlook for the Next 2 Weeks

Good Morning, Happy Monday!

I apologize for my absence over the past two weeks, mainly the fact that there was not consistency with the sub in my place.  That is unacceptable to me and I have expressed my disappointment. While I do apologize for this, the work that was assigned during my absence should have been clear and easy to understand given the handouts provided.  For the things not clearly communicated I apologize and will make a few concessions.

With that said, while I was gone you were responsible for completing two handouts.  The handouts were "The Adventure of Buying a Car" which included 12 questions that required you to complete research on Cars.com and a second handout entitled "Buying a Car" which consisted of 6 steps and 4 total pages in which you discuss a car you would like to purchase and the cost of owning that specific car.   These assignments will be due next Friday, 4/17, the day before we leave for Spring Break.  Keep in mind you had 2 weeks of dedicated class time to work on these projects and have 2 more until Spring Break (plenty of time).  While there were blog posts requested of you during my absence, I do understand that this may not have been clearly communicated.  With that said, each of you who posted a blog during my absence will receive 5 extra credit points for each day you posted.  You may not go back and make these up.  They were either posted during the weeks of 3/23-27 and 3/30-4/3 or they were not.  Moving forward, as you have been aware, our stock market portfolio due date is also quickly approaching.  The portfolio must be typed, meet all the requirements and must be turned in at the start of class on the due date which we discussed was Friday, April 17^{th at the start of the Semester, January 9th to be exact.  While not a small amount of work, if you have been using your classtime well over the past two weeks this should not be overwhelming.  If you have not, you may have a bit of work cut out for you this next few weeks.  All of the above will be due on Friday, April 17th - please, no exceptions.}

Finally, for today's blog post, please respond to the following:

1. How was your weekend?
2. How have you been doing in school, academically, over the past two weeks?  This semester?
3. What struggles have you had? What areas have you been doing particularly well in?
4. What was your impression of buying a car?  Did you find there to be more to research than you had expected?
5. How well did you use your time during my absence?  Be honest!!  Were you here everyday?  Focused? Working hard?  Could you have been more on task?

Thanks for a thorough, thoughtful response.  Glad to be back!