Welcome!

This Career Connected Learning (CCL) Planning and Implementation Guide can be completed by building teams independent of having completed the CSC course. Given the probability that most individuals and building teams will consist of educators representing a variety of school district sizes and professionals (e.g., school counselors, school social workers, child development specialists, administrators, teachers, etc.), this course uses inclusive language as often as possible. 

The team leader for this work may be a teacher, a counselor, an administrator, or a school social worker. If your building has a licensed school counselor, please engage them in this work.

1. Identify Team Members:

   • Objective: Find individuals and organizations that are already involved in career-connected learning or have the potential to contribute.

     Action: Reach out to representatives from the organizations listed previously, such as ASPIRE, AVID, Boys and Girls Clubs, C3, Chambers of Commerce, Oregon ACTE, OregonASK, Pre-ETS, STEM Hubs, TRIO, Vocational Rehabilitation, Workforce Development Boards, YMCA, and Youth Transition Specialists.

2. Understand Their Goals:

   • Objective: Learn about the specific goals and missions of each organization to understand how they align with career-connected learning.

   • Action: Schedule meetings or interviews with key representatives to discuss their current initiatives, challenges, and future plans. Document their goals and how they contribute to career-connected learning.

3. Align Goals with Team Objectives:

   • Objective: Ensure that the goals of each organization support the overarching goals of the career-connected learning team.

   • Action: Create a shared vision and mission statement that reflects the collective goals. Identify areas of overlap and potential collaboration. Develop a strategic plan that outlines how each organization’s efforts will contribute to the team’s objectives.

Go to the CCL toolkit and Program Partners lists in section 4c and find potential members for your expanded CCL Team.  Consider setting up a meeting.  Make sure the meeting is long enough that each member has a few minutes (about 5 to highlight their organization and goals.  You might reach out to your Career Connected Learning Navigator to help you create a regional meeting.

When you meet with your team, document what is going well and what needs attention, and then work with the team members to see which member(s) are in the best position to support in areas where improvement is needed.

The CCL Toolkit will provide a more in-depth examination of the Oregon Administrative Rules, which serve as the foundation of the course. At this juncture, it is timely to share OAR 581-022-2055 Career Education. This OAR provides several primary distinctions about the intent of the course and, thus, the audience for whom the course is intended.

Each school district shall implement plans for career education for grades K through 12, as required in OAR 581-022-2030, in conjunction with its Comprehensive School Counseling Program. Career education curriculum is part of the overall district curriculum, written to address Essential Skills, Education Plan and Education Profile, Career Connected Learning, and employability skills, and post-secondary options, and may include career and technical education.

Note that the OAR states “plans for career education K through 12”, thus, this course applies to career connected learning across all grade levels. This course is specifically targeted for building teams consisting of school counselors, college access professionals, college/career advisors, coordinators, administrators, CTE teachers, teachers in schools that do not have counselors, and other individuals or school teams (in a combination appropriate for your school) who want or need an understanding of Oregon’s Career Connected Learning Framework and the interrelated components of it. 

For those who have worked in the schools for some time and are familiar with the terms career education and career development, the distinction Career Connected Learning is important to make at the beginning of the guide: Oregon defines the states of career development through a system of Career Connected Learning—a framework of career awareness, exploration, preparation, and training that is both learner-relevant and directly linked to professional and industry-based expectations.

The CCL framework encompasses four key stages:

• Career Awareness—learning ABOUT work

• Career Exploration—learning FOR work

• Career Preparation—learning THROUGH work

• Career Training—learning AT work

This guide will be available for several years, and individuals/teams can utilize these materials to build their plans over time.  The CSC course development team indicated that it is not unusual to build out the comprehensive school counseling program over a two to three year timeline. This timeline may be required for your work in building out the K-12 career connected learning program as well. We also suggest dividing the work into several sections that can be managed and implemented within the school calendar. You will see the recommended sequence below:

The course consists of the following modules:

Begin with modules 1-3 before starting the use of the toolkit

• 1) Welcome to the Career Connected Learning Toolkit

• 2) What is CCL? and Why Is It Important?

• 3) CCL: Equity, Inclusion & Implicit Bias

Select the Appropriate toolkit for your school setting and complete the introduction sections

• 4) CCL Toolkits and Resources (Select the appropriate one for your use)

  1. 4.a) CCL Toolkit: Elementary

  2. 4.b) CCL Toolkit: Secondary

  3. 4.c) CCL Program Partners

  4. 4.d) Additional Resources

Complete course section 5 - before starting the School Review Section in either toolkit

• 5) Family and Caregiver Involvement

Complete course sections 6a, 6b & 6c before starting the Action Planning Tool in either toolkit

• 6) Career Assessments:

  1. 6.a) Career Assessment Instruments/Platforms

  2. 6.b) Career Assessment: Ethical Use

  3. 6.c) Career Assessment: Utilizing & Sharing Results

Complete course section 7 - Continuous Improvement

• 7) Continuous Improvement

Review Continuous Improvement strategies once plan development is completed.

Your team is invited to:

• Join with us in sharing the:

  • Belief that all Oregon learners have a right to “go where they want to go, do what they want to do, and be who they want to be in freedom and joy.”  Francine Jarry has communicated this belief in a song you can watch in this short video: Freedom and Joy. The Content Development Team (CDT) also believes that a comprehensive CCL program implemented in collaboration within a comprehensive school counseling program is one of the best ways schools can help learners fulfill this birthright.

  • Vision that by the 2028-29 school year, at least 80% of the learners in Oregon will be receiving the comprehensive career connected learning services specified in OAR 581-022-2055.  By that time, school superintendents will have adopted the practice of meeting with their school counseling team or the school counseling team lead to review the OAR 581-022-2055 compliance checklist.

  • Mission that by the 2028-29 school year, at least 80% of districts will be providing learners with K-12 career connected learning experiences as specified in OAR 581-022-2055.

• Identify and engage with your CCL team members before going to work on the other tasks outlined in this course.  School counselors, career-technical educators, teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, community members, and other career professionals in your district are already doing specific elements of your comprehensive CCL program.  Identifying these individuals and their CCL program contributions will help your team realize that many components of the program are already in place.  Collaborating as a team helps ensure that learners receive the career and academic support and encouragement your team knows they deserve.

• Know that in this course and the Comprehensive School Counseling course, career and college readiness is the preferred language to college and career readiness.  This change in language acknowledges that in working with learners on their Ed Plan and Profile, we start by helping them identify a career pathway and then identify the level of post high-school education required for the career they have chosen.

• Have fun while doing this work. There is a tremendous amount of information in this toolkit, and it can feel challenging at times to assimilate and utilize it all. At the same time, we hope you will enjoy accessing this high-quality information and using it to serve your learners.  You can spend a few minutes now looking at resources such as Oregon Employability Skills and Career Connect Oregon.  Doing so will hopefully increase your enthusiasm for this work, knowing you will have many awesome videos, lesson resources, career assessment tools, and other resources to serve your learners.

• Keep your momentum by highlighting the numerous advantages your K-12 CCL plan brings to learners, staff, and the community. Know that comprehensive K-12 CCL programs produce many of the outcomes that schools desire such as: higher graduation rates, better attendance, increased post high-school career and college matriculation rates.

• Provide staff and administration with professional development so they are prepared to develop and implement an equitable and inclusive program.

• Include parents and caregivers and caregivers within the CCL program. Learners identify their parents or caregivers as a primary influence on their career and educational aspirations.  Comprehensive CCL programming thus needs to provide information to parents to assist them in helping their child with career and educational planning.

• Remember that the one constant in our world is change. Comprehensive K-12 CCL plans naturally focus on helping learners develop a career pathway. This course will also invite teams to consider building into their plans a focus on helping learners build career resilience - the ability to adapt to change.  As noted in this video, Did you Know 2024, We are currently preparing learners for jobs that don’t yet exist … Using technologies that haven’t been invented... In order to solve problems that we do not know are even problems yet.  Career development professionals are also aware of artificial intelligence's impact on the outlook for employment in various careers, such that employment prospects in many fields will be impacted in the not-too-distant future.

• Keep in mind that  Oregon’s Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (TSEL) framework and standards were adopted by the State Board of Education on June 15, 2023 and to be implemented in districts by July 1, 2024 (ORS 329.045, Section 4). The framework and standards utilize and expand on CASEL’s definition of Transformative SEL to help build capacity for strengthening school cultures that center equity and support learner and adult well-being through a systemic approach. SEL is foundational to a learners’ career development and are the “soft skills”, or employability skills, that employers are looking for when hiring. These include knowledge, attitudes and skills in managing emotions, achieving personal and collective goals, feeling and showing empathy for others, establishing and maintaining supportive relationships, and making responsible and caring decisions. The benefits of social and emotional learning are well-researched, with evidence demonstrating that an education that promotes SEL leads to positive lifetime outcomes for learners, adults, and school communities, whereby learners are more likely to reach secondary and postsecondary milestones and gain stable, full-time employment.

• Finally, just a reminder of what you already know is true: The most important aspect of this work and any work with learners is the 3 R’s = Relationship, Relationship, Relationship. In the school counseling world, this is known as the therapeutic or working alliance. Members of your team are busy and it may be challenging to take time to build connections with learners to assist them in processing all of the information presented to them and help them find meaning in what they are invited to consider. Too much information and too little meaning - how will your team present information in ways that help learners find meaning?