Don’t wait until your homeschooler approaches upper high school before helping them decide what they want to do afterward. Instead, learn how to help your middle schooler explore careers sooner than later!
How to Help Your Middle Schooler Explore Careers
Allow them to brainstorm different careers that interest them.
A lot of times, it’s easy to ignore or push off the moments our kids say that want to be something. In most cases, it comes up when they’re playing or if it revolves around something they’re presently active or involved in. But instead of brushing these spurts of “I wanna be a doctor!” off, consider using it as a learning lesson and a chance to research.
Find out what they know before researching.
Before researching a particular career, find out what your child knows about it. On one hand you may be surprised by what they tell you and on the other, it can give you a starting point of what to help them look into.
Take a deep dive into learning all about a career.
This is something I didn’t think of doing until a few years ago. But once the lightbulb went off, I couldn’t unsee what I saw in my mind (which also why I created a resource for it, below). When my son told me he wanted to be a mechanical engineer, I sent him on a research journey to learn everything about it.
I wanted him to find out:
- the job description and duties
- typical salary
- amount of hours worked on a daily/weekly basis
- activity requirements
- skills needed
- abilities needed
- education, knowledge, and experience
- and anything else he wanted to know/learn
By doing this, he was able to decide if this was, in fact, something that he wanted to continue pursuing.
My Career Exploration Journal
The My Career Exploration Journal was created with middle school and early high schoolers in mind. Skip taking unnecessary classes and dodge changing majors at college and help your student be prepared to pursue the career of their dreams. This journal isn’t like any other career journal as it takes your student’s on an in-depth adventure.
About the My Career Exploration JournalMassive List of Careers
Pulling from careerplanner.com, this resource has a list of almost 200 careers to help your student brainstorm a few they’d like to explore. If they’re unsure of what they’d like to look into, this list will surely help them get started.
PURCHASE A DIGITAL COPY OF THE JOURNAL HERE
This journal is also available in paperback here.
How to Help Your Middle Schooler Explore Careers: A Chat with Pat Fenner from Breakthrough Homeschooling
Final Thoughts
There are so many benefits to helping your middle schooler explore careers well before they reach graduation-age. The resource I created can easily be incorporated into your homeschool lesson plans and your child can explore one career per month or per semester. In the end, they’ll be knowledgeable on many different career types and be confident with what they choose to do later in life!