Around Town Round Up-- Vocational Activities at School

Often when we work with our middle school and high school teams they are planning ahead for their students' vocational needs. It is important that students have a variety of opportunities to explore and practice vocational skills before they graduate in order to determine their career-readiness. Most of our teams implement a mix of community and school-based vocational activities. Today's Around Town Round Up will focus on some of our favorite school-based activities.

When first implementing vocational activities, many of our teachers use a rotating system where they provide a pre-determined number of activities or jobs and students take turns each week completing the assigned tasks. 

Lisa Bauer's students at Northmont Middle School collect and organize box tops, prepare crayon baggies for Frisch's, and crush cans for recycling. 

While the students in Allysson Rudnicki's classroom at Tipp High School work together to run their classroom coffee cart. Each student wears a lanyard which provides the steps one needs to complete for each job. 

As students become proficient in the vocational tasks, some teachers begin an interview process where students are allowed to choose what they want to do based on a provided job description. This further develops their independence and prepares them for life after graduation. 

At Tri-Village High School, Karyn Smith provides her students with job descriptions that can also serve as task lists once the student is hired. 

In Robbie Whorton's class at Trotwood-Madison High School, job descriptions are posted for students to interview. Then, each day they need to check off their time sheet to ensure they are paid for the work they complete. 

The team at Springfield High School recently implemented the Practical Assessment Exploration System (PAES) Lab which is a highly structured, pre-made system of tasks and assessments to determine career readiness in a variety of fields including: Construction/Industrial, Processing/Production, Consumer/Service, Business/Marketing, and Computer Technology. Student progress is tracked and used to create employment profiles that can be used during an interview with a potential employer.

Each task is color coded in a designated box. Inside each box contains all necessary supplies as well as a task card.

For more information about the PAES Lab visit their website: Practical Assessment Exploration System (PAES)


For more ideas on vocational tasks and classroom jobs, check out our previous posts:

Organization Station: Classroom Job Displays

Taskbox Time: Vocational and Life Skills Tasks

Taskbox Time: More Vocational and Life Skills Tasks (accessible 1/30/2020)