Blog 10: Career Assessment

There were many tidbits of information that I found helpful to my current work in this week’s reading from Drummond and Jones (2010).  The first thing that caught my attention was Drummond and Jones’ assertion that some psychological theory holds that “learning cannot take place without a feeling of interest” (p. 220).  I see this taking place every day at work.  My students are not often interested in the subjects that they are studying.  If they do happen to find one subject more interesting than another, it becomes quickly obvious because they exert all of their energies toward the class that interests them the most.  They often surge ahead in that class and fall behind in all the rest.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase, “Miss, when am I ever going to use this?  This is so boring/hard!  I’m not going to do it!”  Of course I tell them things like, “You never know what skills or knowledge you are going to need someday.  We all have subjects that we like less than others and we all have subjects that we have to work harder in than others.  We all have to do things that we don’t like in order to survive and keep a job, so get used to it!  Even if you don’t use this specific information you are learning now, at least you are learning how to learn!”  Unfortunately, my speeches usually seem to fall on deaf ears.  I often wonder what more we can do in order to interest our students in the subjects that the State requires them to learn.  I also wonder if getting students thinking about and interested in a specific career path earlier in their education would help them to stay motivated once they get to high school.

A couple of career assessment tools mentioned by Drummond and Jones (2010) stuck out to me as I considered the population of students that I currently work with.  The first was the Self-Directed Search.  I was familiar with this assessment since taking Career Development last year, however, I was unaware of the fact that the SDS has a special form for use with individuals with limited reading skills as they explore vocational options.  While not all of my students require special assistance with reading, I have noticed that a significant amount of my students struggle with reading and writing.  This can be a severe limitation for them depending on the career path that they decide to follow.  I, for one, would be very interested to see if some of those students would be able to identify a vocational path that both interested them and fit their skills and abilities after using this form or the Career Assessment Inventory – Vocational Version.  As Drummond and Jones (2010) note: “job success is usually correlated more with abilities than interest” (p. 226).  This is something I plan to keep in mind as I help students with career planning both now and in the future.

Reference

Drummond, R.J. & Jones, K. (2010). Assessment procedures for counselors and helping professionals ( 7^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.