Concept Note: Career Exploration and Planning Training Program for High Schools Students

Prepared by: Lula Yibaleh, Learning and Training Specialist

Submitted to: Vision Academy

Section I: Background and Summary

This concept note is prepared by educators with more than a decade experience in the teaching, training
and educational development industry. The idea for this training came about after observing a huge gap
in the career training sector specially for high school students. Even though this is a very crucial
discipline, in most cases, it seems that schools need external support, especially considering the hectic
work environment of the academic year, to give the place and time career exploration and planning
deserves in their curriculum. Hence we are offering to conduct this training free of charge at your school
to your high school students. Please note that this is a pilot project, however the tools and activities that
will be used will be tools and activities that have been tested and proven to work. We thank you in
advance for your consideration and we look forward to implementing this project with excitement.

Section II: Purpose and Scope of the Proposed Program

This program’s main purpose is to help high school students have the right mind set and the proper
tools to explore their career choices and paths now and in the future. Selecting the right career and
exploring the career path successfully is not a simple task. It’s a task that requires sufficient deliberation,
contemplation, focus and intensive work on understanding one’s self and the career world. For this,
adolescence is a crucial period. Working towards a career plan at this stage is essential for exploring
career interests early on and making decisions that will positively influence future career development.
Having a career exploration and planning training will help students to be more focused, to learn about
themselves, offers them ideas about how the job industry works and the tools to explore it. 

In most schools there is no structure in place that helps student explore their career choices and provide
the right guidance. Students do not get the support they need while preparing themselves to select a
career path, which will lead students to make decisions that may not have been clearly anticipated
based on the area of interest the students have, thus they may end up making the wrong decision which
will have a big impact on their lives.
It evident that schools must equip students not only with academic knowledge but also with career-
related competencies. Hence, career exploration and planning education plays a vital role in supporting
students to manage their experiences related to career and preparing them for the future. Different
researches have shown that career planning education in schools is important for students’ career
preparation, which is the development of the self-knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable students
to make more meaningful decisions now and in the future. These type of education and training is
known to offer higher chances of success in the professional path by assisting students set goals, studies
suggest that having certain career goals raises students’ self-esteem, satisfaction, and overall
psychological well-being.

This career exploration and planning training intends to give students a good idea of what their focus
should be on as they begin exploring their career options. It is expected to be a starting point for student
who then can continue with their explorations with a better understanding and attitude. The training
will focus on high school students and will explore the following topics.
Main areas to be addressed

 Student’s self-knowledge and awareness in terms of their talents and interest, values and
motivation, weakness and strength etc.
 Understanding on how to navigate the career world in line with their individual identity.
 Ability of students to self-learn and self-regulate.
 Students ability to quickly adopt to and cope with the ever evolving job and career industry

Section II: Proposed Content Outline for Training

The content of the training will mainly focus on self-exploration/discovery and Career exploration and
planning. Taking in to consideration the limited amount of timed that will be allotted for the training
(two days for each grade) it made more sense to focus on a few main points that are the most important
and powerful in the career exploration path.
Self-exploration/Self-discovery: If students form a strong awareness of self it will be considered that
more than half the work needed in having a successful career development journey is already done. This
is because having a strong self-knowledge leads to understanding some of the most important aspects in
career development. In this training students will be given the opportunity to start learning about
themselves more. They will be given tools to identify and learn about their;
  Weakness and strength;
 Interests;
 Talents;
 Learning behavior and their strong area of intelligence;
 personality types;
 Passion;
 Aspiration;
 Motivation, etc.

Getting a good idea of these aspects of themselves can then lead them towards creating a career plan
that is a perfect fit for their individual identity. This increases their chance of being successful in their
career and other parts of their life in general.

Career Exploration and Planning: Once student get a good idea of what the self-discovery path looks
like, they will then move on to exploring types of careers that can match with their personality and
interest. In the training they will be led towards the tools that will help them dive deep in to the below
topics.
 Forming their own career philosophy and principle to guide them with their exploration.
 Understand the main elements and tools of successful career planning.
 Explore career clusters and navigation technics.
 Understand the importance and ways of continuous learning
o Self-regulated learning
o Institutionalized (Traditional Learning)
 Ideas on how to get experience

 The training will try to address the above mentioned points through different
engaging activities and online tools. The detailed training manual will be shared as
per the laid out timeline on the final section of this concept note.
Section III: Target Group

As stated in the summary section and as can be seen from the title, the target groups for this career
exploration and learning training are high school students. More specifically student’s students that will
be in the 10th 11th and 12th grade in the coming academic year 2022/2023 G.C. (2015 E.C.).

As discussed in the introduction section, the main aim of conducting a career exploration and planning
training for this age/grade group is to give them a head start on their future, so they have enough time
to explore and choose their career. The focus here is more on guiding them towards the right tools and
attitude to navigate their career path successfully.

Section IV: Proposed Timeline

The timeline for the general work plan and the trainings is proposed as below. This is a tentative
schedule and will be subject to adjustments depending on situations and preference of the school.

 Submission of training modules to the school for approval: July 30, 2022
 Training 1, Grade 10: August 13-14, 2022
 Training 2, Grade 11: August, 27-28, 2022
 Training 3, Grade 12, 2022: September 3-4, 2022

 The trainings will be a two days training and will be conducted over the weekend where one
weekend is given for each grade.