The following resources support career development in grades P-12.

CareerZone

The New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) Program Development Office serves as a single point of contact to support workforce professionals working with youth, individuals with disabilities, and persons with a criminal record for education, career, and life success. The office disseminates NYSDOL resources and provides technical assistance to programs and partner organizations serving these populations.

The premier tool for helping youth explore and learn about the world of work is CareerZone. This Internet-based interactive resource is made available to youth, educators, counselors, parents/guardians, and job seekers at no cost to users. The website provides valuable up-to-date career information on over 800 occupations and over 400 real world-of-work videos. There are additional features where youth can assess their interests, explore careers, and develop budgets around an occupation’s wages and the youth’s lifestyle choices.

CareerZone Lesson Plans is a resource of over 50 lessons for educators and facilitators, each aligned to the New York Common Core Learning Standards, which integrate CareerZone into classrooms and workshops. The activities address academic and career development areas such as: financial literacy, digital literacy, entrepreneurship, career self-assessment, understanding career areas, and job search tools.

CareerOneStop

CareerOneStop is an excellent career planning and research site developed by the U.S. Department of Labor. 

O*NET

O*NET is the nation's primary source of occupational information. The O*NET database contains information on hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors. O*NET OnLine is an excellent interactive application for exploring and searching occupations and also provides Career Exploration Tools students looking to find careers.

Ag Explorer

National FFA and Discovery Education have joined forces to create Ag Explorer, a robust, comprehensive career resource to explore the broad range of careers within the diverse industry of agriculture. Careers may have you using advanced equipment, creating new hybrid seeds, raising animals, managing people or designing new products and packaging. The industry of agriculture can open up a world of possibilities, and the demand for professionals in every agricultural area is high. Learn about career may be right for you by watching the videos, exploring the career pages and completing the Career Finder interactive.

CTE Clearinghouse: Career Guidance and Counseling

The Career Guidance and Counseling division of the Association for Career and Technical Eduction (ACTE) maintains and an extensive clearinghouse of resources for counselors and teachers in help students with career exploration and planning.

Middle School Career Academies for College and Career Readiness: A Guide for Interdisciplinary Implementation

Middle School Career Academies for College and Career Readiness: A Guide for Interdisciplinary Implementation is a description of the Newark Valley Middle School program. Part I of the guide talks about the structure of this research-based program and the Renzulli’s Enrichment Triad Model on which it is based. The philosophy, delivery, student projects, program outcomes, and lessons learned are explained. A resource list is provided to assist in replicating the model. An administrative perspective by the school’s principal is also included.

Part II is designed to be used as a working document as teachers pursue the career academy model. The introduction provides a Lesson Plan Template, which can be accessed as a Word document for easy use. Middle school teachers provide their thoughts about program implementation here as well. The first section of lesson plans is dedicated to Family & Consumer Sciences; the academies grew out of the work that Jessica Williams, a FACS teacher, was doing in her classroom. The lessons and their supporting appendices can be used as they are or adjusted to meet the needs of the classrooms, students, and teachers. The second section of lessons come from English Language Arts, General Science, Social Studies, Health Education, and Art Education teachers who joined in the career academy initiative. Grading rubrics and student work samples are also provided with these lessons.

This guide should prove useful in moving toward a career academy structure in a middle school. It can also be used to meet individual teacher needs in creating active and engaging student experiences.

This document is comprised of eight parts that can be downloaded in Word or PDF.