Career, College and Life Ready

To be prepared for the future, each student needs a strong academic base. They also need essential life skills and support to explore – and find – their next steps to a happy, healthy and productive life.

From early childhood through high school, students are building academic and life skills. They are also exploring and finding their life, education and career path. We recognize that each student is on their own journey. Our job is to support them in finding and being prepared for the path they choose.

When they leave our schools:

We want each student to have the skills they need for life, education and career success.
We want each student to have explored and have a good idea of careers that may bring them joy and success.
We want each student to have exposure to college-level learning and the chance to earn some free credits.

Along the way, we want each student to have learned how they can unlock their learning for life.

Graduates from the high school visit their roots with a grad walk party at Woodcrest Spanish Immersion

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Personalized Learning Experiences

A Place of Value and Belonging

Gaining Career, College and Life Ready Skills

Academic learning is important. Just as important are the skills and mindsets students will need to succeed in the future.

At all grade levels, student work is designed to develop academic and life skills students will need in their future.

Students who engage with meaningful, relevant work are better able to apply their learning in situations they will encounter throughout their lives. Students learn more deeply when they are doing work they find relevant to their life and their future.

This is true at every age. Our teachers take this very seriously as they design student work.

Life Skills and Mindsets – Across Grade Levels

Industry and community partners provided input and feedback to help us identify the life skills students need to be successful. At every age, student learning experiences focus on academic content as well as these skills and mindsets.

Self-direction
Collaboration
Digital Literacy
Civic and Cultural Awareness
Communication
Critical Thinking
Creativity and Innovation

Student work focuses on the academic content for each subject – like Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, Math – while providing opportunities to develop and practice these life skills. Life skills are consistent at each age and stage but the learning is deeper and more complex as students grow.

Designing Relevant Student Work

Students learn at a deeper level when they find their schoolwork relevant to their lives and valuable to their future. This is true at every grade level.

Teaching and learning across all levels focuses on developing students’ knowledge and skills so they can apply their learning to real situations. We’re not just teaching or learning for a test. Teachers’ knowledge of their students’ interests, strengths and motives helps shape the work they provide.

How much time is spent in the classroom on a topic is much less important than a student learning to be able to show what they know. When it’s time to demonstrate what they’ve learned, students have choices so they can show their learning in ways that are meaningful to them.

Along the way, teachers know what skills students have mastered and where more work is needed. Ongoing feedback helps students and families understand progress and next steps.

AVID Programming - To Support Career and College Readiness

We use Advancement in Individual Determination (AVID) programming in grades 5-12. AVID curriculum focuses on specific college and career readiness skills – writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization and reading, often referred to as WICOR.

There are two layers of AVID programming:

Schoolwide, AVID curriculum is focused on the WICOR strategies and is embedded in grades 5-12.
An elective course also is offered in grades 7-12. The elective is ideal for students in the academic middle who are college bound. The course works on WICOR strategies, applying the strategies to current course work and exploring colleges and careers.

Exploring Careers

We want to provide students with opportunities to explore their future possibilities based on their strengths and interests. When we do, we meet their current needs and set them up for long-term success.

This all starts early in a child’s experience at Spring Lake Park Schools as we make connections between learning and life. When kids ask why they are learning something, we want to provide a real-life answer. Early on, this leads to connections students make between what they are learning and different professions.

As they grow, students learn more about how their strengths and interests might translate to specific career paths. Beginning in middle school, there are opportunities for students to more explicitly explore career paths through their learning experiences.

At Spring Lake Park High School, career exploration becomes more concrete and immediate. Career and College Pathways are sets of courses students can take within specific industry and career sectors as they explore what they may like – or not like – to do in the future.

Career and College Pathways
Community and Industry Partners

Career and College Pathways

Each Career and College pathway represents a predicted need for future jobs. There are three Pathways. Courses provide real-world experience as students develop skills within a field and opportunities to explore different career options. Students can explore courses within each pathway or choose to take all the courses in a single pathway as they look for their right-fit career. Many courses offer college credits.

+ Business and Entrepreneurship

+ Technology, Engineering and Design

+ Health and Human services

Learn more about Career and College Pathways at Spring Lake Park High School.

Community and Industry Partners

More than 200 community and industry partners work with us across grade levels to connect learning to real life.

In elementary and middle school, our partners engage with teaching staff to identify and make connections between student work and future professions. They do classroom visits and contribute to learning design.

At the high school, partners are guest instructors, host worksite tours and visit, provide internships and apprenticeships and are “clients” for student projects. Whether they are speaking to a class or providing mentorship, community and industry partners help students explore and identify potential future paths as they also build the future workforce.

Earning College Credits

Students pose with their college gear on decision day at the high school

Increasingly, any path beyond high school requires some exposure to college-level work. Our goal is for each student to have the chance to explore college courses at the high school with the potential to earn up to a semester of college credit before they graduate. That translates to 12 college credits by the end of the 12th grade – all without leaving their Spring Lake Park High School experience.

Research shows that completion of one semester of college-level work results in greater success after high school regardless of the path you take. This approach prepares students for 2-year, 4-year and technical training and jobs. It also makes financial sense. Earning college credits now saves money in the future.

Spring Lake Park High School offers more than 50 courses that have opportunities for college credit. Learn more about the many pathways to earning college credit at the high school.

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The Making of a Teacher

Through real-world student teaching placements, college-level coursework and mentorship from educators across the district, students in the Teacher Education program explore what it truly means to lead a classroom. See how hands-on learning is shaping the next generation of educators.

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