How to Use HirePaths During the School Year
For the past two years, I have taught sixth grade at Mission Valley Elementary in Eskridge, Kansas. Before that I taught fifth grade in Wamego for two years. In my years of education, I have learned that teaching is so much more than just teaching the content from teacher books. One thing I love about teaching: Every day is a new day, and no two days are the same. As an upper elementary teacher, I have the privilege of being real and honest with my students. HirePaths has allowed me to teach my students about real-life experiences and careers they could have one day. Follow along as I break down my experiences month to month!
August: We didn’t start school until the end of August, so I didn’t really dig into HirePaths with my students. I did explain the process with my students and the opportunities they would have throughout the year.
September: I introduced the HirePaths website to my students and showed that there were tons of resources for them and their parents. We spent some time looking around on the website.
December: Every day, my students have something called Viking Time. This is a time blocked off in our day for interventions. During the English Language Arts (ELA) portion, students often read comprehension passages to work on their fluency as well as their comprehension while reading aloud with a partner. During this time, I started introducing different careers after high school by having the students read various articles. Students were able to see careers they might not get to see normally.
January: Students were given the opportunity to go on the HirePaths website and take the career quiz. Once they took the quiz, they filled out a worksheet on the career they chose and did a little research on it to see if it is something they would be interested in in the future.
February: We had a bunch of snow days this month, so plans were shifted and needed to be used for the ELA/math curriculum
March: Leading up to spring break, I had my students watch some of the HirePaths videos and reflect on them with their tablemates.
April: I introduced students to a career research project. It was a more in-depth project than what we did in January. Students had to choose a career then do research, practice making a resume/cover letter, complete an interview and see if they got the career.
May: To end the year, students finished the project assigned at the end of April. They had to present their career and “real-world” experience to their classmates.
Skyler Fiske was the 2024-2025 Midwest Energy HirePaths Teacher Ambassador. She teaches at Mission Valley Elementary in Eskridge, Kansas.
