Progress. We now have a total of some 104 career presentations, 37 job shadowing opportunities, and 89 tours of work places posted on our Web site. We have begun collaborating with the Ann Arbor Schools School-to-Work program and the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce and Kiwanis to solicit more resources, especially for shadowing and tours. We also have been working with the Health Occupations Partners in Education (HOPE) program to develop more resources in health-related careers, specifically for Ypsilanti Public Schools secondary students.
Barriers and Challenges. The only problem of note is shortage of time. There are so many things we want to do and so much we are already doing that career resource solicitation has not been as productive as we had hoped. That is why we think we are on the right track in hooking to organizations, so as to hit many people at once, instead of pursuing individuals. We expect the Chamber, Kiwanis, and HOPE connections to pay off during the next year.
Adjustments to Goals, Aims, Procedures. As a new branch of our career exploration activities, we have developed a set of on-line resources for college and career planning, beginning with self-analysis tools such as on-line personality tests that can help one to determine individual skills and preferences and the appropriate kinds of careers for that profile. We searched for and link to the best materials we could find on all aspects of searching for, applying to, and paying for college. Similarly, we collected career planning curricula, guides, exercises, detailed information on more than 50 specific fields from accounting to zoology, and a few on-line databases and other means of searching for actual jobs. We have directly brought these resources and techniques for self-analysis and career exploration to Slauson Middle School students in Ann Arbor and to high school students at the Ann Arbor teen club The Neutral Zone. Work-study Rachel Keefer is planning to make them available in a structured way to Pioneer High students in our mentor coordination office at the school. Many of our UM volunteers have reported making personal use of these resources, which is a sign of how little career guidance anyone in our society receives and how much it is needed.