General Career Awareness Activities

Many middle and high schools offer career awareness activities. These activities can range from 'Go To Work With A Parent Day' to Career fairs and career days where professionals from various fields provide workshops about their professions and are available to answer questions. Personnel planning these activities need to be encouraged to include special education as a career field.

34 Activities to Promote Careers in Special Education & Related Services
This book contains activities designed to interest people in the field of Special Education. Its purpose is to offer long-term rather than short-term solutions to shortages in the field of Special Education.

Available from the National Clearinghouse for Professions in Special Education
The Council for Exceptional Children
1920 Association Drive
Reston, VA 20191-1589
(703) 620-3660 TTY (703) 264-9449

Extracurricular Clubs

Extracurricular clubs have the potential for easily reaching a large number of students. Nation-wide extracurricular clubs serve more middle and high school students than any other type of precollegiate teacher recruitment activity. Future teacher clubs, such as the National Future Educators of America, have been in existence since the 1950's and have undergone resurgence in the late 1980's and early 1990's. A Club-style program offers districts that want to promote careers in education a way to reach a large number of students while using fewer resources than many other approaches.

Future Educators of America is a national program for middle and high school students interested in exploring careers in education.

Institutes and Workshops

Workshops and institutes are another approach to providing middle and high school students with information and experiences in education. Many school districts throughout the nation participate in programs involving students in institutes or workshops that vary in length from one day to six weeks. Some districts find it possible to provide such workshops; other assist their students' participation in programs offered by other organizations including those offered by university programs.

Phi Delta Kappa is an international organization for professional educators. The organization's mission is to promote quality education, with particular emphasis on publicly supported education. One of the organizations activities is a two-week summer institute offered on the Bloomington campus of the University of Indiana.

Curricular offerings

Offering high school courses focused on teaching and education, as part of the school curriculum is a widely used approach for recruiting students. Course topics range from the application of educational theories in general courses to methods of teaching. Two aspects of curricular offerings should not be overlooked. First, successful programs allowed students time to conduct research, form their own opinions and then discuss those opinions. Second, initial data suggests that programs having the most impact provide hands on teaching experiences for their students.

Teacher Academies and Magnet Schools

Some school districts have gone a step further and have created teacher academies and magnet schools. These programs offer a teaching focus woven throughout the entire curriculum, an across the board teaching focus.

The Career Academy Support Network The Career Academy Support Network (CASN) offers comprehensive support and staff development for Small Learning Communities and Career Academies at which students can fulfill requirements for college entrance while learning to relate their academics to the world outside high school.

The CASN website contains valuable links to resources and downloadable guides, handbooks, and useful forms for administrators, all available free of charge.

Innovations in Education: Creating Successful Magnet School Programs

This fourth book in the Innovations in Education series identifies six school districts whose successful magnet programs offer a range of contexts, experiences, and perspectives.

References

Recruiting New Teachers, Inc. Teaching's Next Generation: A National Study of Precollegiate Teacher Recruitment, A Joint Project of the Dewitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., 1993 (Available from Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., 385 Concord Avenue, Belmont, MA 02178, phone: (617) 489-6000)