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Training Overview

Every student is entitled to know what it takes to succeed. This is virtually an American birthright and yet many students today are deprived of this birthright. Right now, many students have insufficient experience with what it is to be responsible, what it means to be persevering, what it is to use common sense. And yet we assume they know: we assume that we are talking the same language. But, a growing number of students leave school without these vital basics. The good news is that they can be taught.

High standards in the classroom and on the job depend on everyone knowing what it takes to succeed. This is what Career MegaSkills is designed to provide - a clear and direct way to build the capacity of all students to achieve.

The Evolution of Career MegaSkills

In developing the original MegaSkills Program (now in over 3000 schools in 48 states) to build children's achievement. I had not thought about how much older students and adults would gain from MegaSkills. It was only through feedback from teachers and employers that I began to understand the value of MegaSkills for the job world. MegaSkills truly are the grades we get on what I call The Never-Ending Report Card.

Young adults reported changes in their own lives. Among them: "I now have the confidence to give a speech." I now know how to talk with my supervisor" "I know how to concentrate more."

They told me that everyday problems seemed to get easier to solve They got more Initiative to request the refund that never seemed to get taken care of. They used Perseverance to get phone calls returned.

They used Problem Solving when someone cut into the line in the front of them. In short, they made MegaSkills work for them…in everyday, daily ways. This is what moved me to develop Career MegaSkills.

The "Internal Internship" Curriculum

Well before students move out into the post-school world of internships, of apprenticeships, of jobs they carry the seeds of success (or failure) inside them. Everyone tells us that to keep up today, to get ahead, we have to be smarter than ever before. Employers are talking about certain competencies they expect of employees - but how do these future employees learn what it takes to do well on the job in this new job world.

Career MegaSkills meets the mandates of the Workforce Investment Act and IDEA to build student capacities and potential for achievement in the workplace of today…and tomorrow.

Using MegaSkills, participants will be able to meet SCANS standards and required competencies. They will, for example, more effectively be able to:

• Plan projects and establish priorities
• Determine resource needs
• Know how to obtain information
• Work with multiple information resources
• Communicate more effectively in speech and writing
• Learn new skills and new technology
• Work more cooperatively with others
• Identify problems and solutions
• Evaluate progress
• Exercise leadership and make more reasonable decisions
• Motivate themselves and others
• Assume greater responsibility
• Work with diversity
• Anticipate issues before they become problems
• Understand more about their individual role in larger systems
• Gain a stronger sense of when to adapt and when to alter course to foster success

SCANS names the characteristics that we must bring along with us to the job. They encompass the MegaSkills-- the "inside" tool boxes --the skills, the abilities and attitudes not seen from the outside.

The Objectives of Career MegaSkills

This initiative, to bring MegaSkills directly into secondary school and workplace settings, is designed:

1. To introduce participants to a new approach designed to develop and sustain strong study and work habits for continuing education and enhanced job performance.
2. To build self-discipline and an ability to cope with pressures, to make individual choices and to build a strong attitude system.
3. To extend learning interests and models for self-assessment.
4. To teach what it takes to succeed in today's workplaces and colleges.
5. To build participants' school to career.

How Career MegaSkills Works

Contents of Career MegaSkills in all of its chapters is keyed to providing answers to three major questions:

• What do we need to know - and be able to do - for success on the job?
• What do we do to learn this?
• How do we show that we know it?

These questions are addressed through a variety of systematic interactive activities:

• Knowing It

Big Picture
Case Study
What Would I Do?

• Doing It

Get Going Activities
Messages to Myself
Put the MegaSkill into Words

• Showing It

Grading Myself
Showing that I Know: Self-Assessment

An Instructor Guide, designed for the program, provides discussion sparkers and related activities including a School/Parent Compact Plan.

SchoolAbilties/EmployAbilities

It's been said over and over that information is the critical resource of the twenty-first century. We must make sure that students acquire the "inside" tools they need to manage information, to help them grow and to expand. That's what MegaSkills is about. They build the base for our SchoolAbilities and our EmployAbilities.