October: Careers, College, and Costumes...Oh my!

Whew.....I have not written in three weeks, and I am ready to share! October has been a fun, busy, and eventful month at Cleveland Elementary.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we celebrate Career and College Month in October.  Be sure to check out some of my favorite career resources here if you are planning lessons.  This year, we had two Fridays where staff and students wore college shirts to promote their favorite teams or alma maters.  Teachers also had a blast decorating their doors for our door decorating contests. The winning doors were exceptional with either sound, light, 3D design, and/or student work being incorporated for a phenomenal display. Winning teachers were awarded a small gift card prize to recognize their awesome creativity and hard work, but ALL staff members who participated were given this little "treat" (below).

Our two first-place doors are below (ECU and NC State) as well as our second place doors (Meredith College).  The NC State door had paws going down the hall with recorded student voices making the wolf howl, and the ECU door had purple lights as well as student-made pirate faces to represent each child...very creative Ms. Troxler and Ms. Graham!

The Meredith doors created by our music teacher, Ms. Fitzgerald, were 3D with balloons, an iron gate, and clouds. Lovely!

For some extra fun this year, I asked teachers to complete a career interview so I could present trivia questions on the morning broadcast throughout the month.  It was a big hit, although next year I will have staff (including myself!) type their answers for ease of reading when students look for answers on my bulletin board.  I did add picture clues next to the interview sheets, which helped out a lot! Students were able to find the teachers who matched the trivia questions and put answers in a basket located in the media center.  I drew one correct answer for each question during the week to recognize the winning students, and they received a small prize.  I will add pictures of my bulletin board this coming week!

Red Ribbon Week fell within our Career and College Week so we linked a drug-free, healthy lifestyle to future education and career success on Career Dress Up Day.  I decided to dress up like a NASCAR race car driver and welcomed my "race fan students" with a floor sign as they came into the building from front carpool. It was a great way to start our Friday as I greeted lots of doctors, animal caretakers, professional athletes, business people, lawyers, and builders (as well as superheroes.....who knew you could get paid for that as an adult?!).

We also began our Career Cafe lunch events this week after completing our Holland's Theory lessons with each fifth grade class. Our first speaker, a fire chief,  represented the REALISTIC category.  We had approximely 25 fifth graders join him for lunch, and the best part was when the students got to try on all the fire gear at the end. I have decided to use an exit slip with the students during Career Cafe events this year so I can gather data on knowledge acquired by the students. I will be adding that slip and my Career Cafe invitation to my TPT store in the coming days. We have lined up future speakers to represent the other Holland's personality categories and have some extension activities planned, which I will share when they occur in December.

I hope my NC friends are gearing up for the NCSCA Conference next week in Greensboro where we will be able to advance our education through professional development.  The annual conference is such a great time to recharge and renew enthusiasm about our profession.  I will be presenting the session "Help! I'm in the Specialist Rotation....Now What?!" on Friday at 9am and would love to see you there. It will be a fun time!  For those of you not in NC, I'll be sure to share the highlights in a future blog post.

Enjoy and Happy Counseling! ~Angela