Career Cafe

I frequently visit The School Counselor Blog.  The author, Danielle, started a new career counseling initiative at her school and encouraged others to try it out.  After reading both her blog post and her article published in the Pennsylvania School Counseling Magazine, I decided to give it a whirl. Based on her ideas, this is my version of Career Cafe...

Front Side

Back Side

I created these postcards on Vistaprint.com and got 100 for free! I just had to pay for shipping.  Career Cafe is going to be a 5th grade program at my school.  First, I plan on having every student complete a career inventory to determine what careers they are most interested in.  Then, I'm going to recruit family and community volunteers that have careers similar to the ones my students are interested in.  My plan is to have 2 volunteers come each month on 1st and 3rd Fridays during 5th grade's lunch time.  Any student whose career inventory results match up with the volunteer that is coming that Friday will receive one of these postcard invitations.  They will bring their lunch to their classroom where they will be able to listen to the guest speaker.

I think this will be a successful program because students will be learning during lunch, which means no instructional time will be used! Teachers will really appreciate this.  Also, students will only be attending career cafe sessions that they are interested in. This will increase student behavior and provide for a more positive experience for the volunteer speakers.

I will let you know how it goes! Does anyone have any suggestions??