Enroll in Career Explorations with Dolphin STEM Academy

Course Overview

This one-semester course is intended as a practical, hands-on guide to career exploration and
planning. This course has 16 lessons organized into four units, plus four Unit Activities. Each
lesson contains one or more Lesson Activities. The course ends with a Course Activity in which
you will create two essential components of a career portfolio: a résumé and a cover letter for
applying for an entry-level job in your chosen career.

This course covers all of the career clusters in the National Career Clusters Framework. You’ll
explore the career pathways within each cluster, determine the academic and skill requirements
for different career pathways, and learn about the jobs available in each pathway and the work
these professionals do. This course will also guide you through the process of creating an
academic and career plan based on you interests, abilities, and life goals.

You will submit the Unit Activity documents to your teacher, and you will grade your work on the
Lesson Activities by comparing them with the given sample responses. The Unit Activities
(submitted to the teacher) and the Lesson Activities (self-checked) are the major components of
this course. There are other assessment components, namely the mastery test questions that
feature along with the lesson; the pre- and post-test questions that come at the beginning and
end of the unit respectively; and an end-of-semester test. All of these tests are a combination of
simple multiple-choice questions and technology enhanced (TE) questions.

Course Goals

This course will help you meet the following goals:
Identify and explore career options in different career clusters and pathways.
Identify the academic requirements for different career pathways.
Identify the skills, abilities, and talents that different careers require.
Identify employment opportunities in different career pathways.
Describe the tasks that people perform in different careers.
Create and manage an academic and career plan that is aligned with your personal goals and interests.
Identify ways that you can earn college credit while you’re still in high school.
Identify various options for funding your college education.
Recognize how your performance in college placement tests such as the SAT, ACT,
ASVAB, and ACCUPLACER impact your academic and career goals.
Identify and acquire basic academic skills, interpersonal skills, technology skills, workplace-readiness skills, and financial management skills for success in college and in your career.
Prepare a job search portfolio and acquire skills for success in job interviews.