Center for School, Family, and Community

Career Development

Overview

Welcome! Career Development is a program of the Education, Career & Community Program at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. We provide a wide range of training, technical assistance, professional development, curriculum development and consultation on youth development, community-based learning and school-to-work transitions.

Learn more about how we can help you:

  • Discover tools, resources, and methods to improve learning outcomes and empower young people to succeed
  • Develop successful partnerships between adults and young people
  • Learn how to engage youth as resources in the community and create leadership opportunities for young people
  • Understand how to structure and document learning in the community and workplace
  • Explore project-based learning and service-learning strategies in the community and classroom
  • Collaborate with business, labor, industry, and community groups to involve youth in hands-on, experiential learning

What is Career Development?

Career development is the process of designing a blueprint for one's life that uses self-knowledge, educational and occupational exploration, and labor market information to make good career decisions.

We believe that in order for all youth to achieve their full potential, they need a solid educational foundation that includes academic, career development and life survival skills.

Training and Technical Assistance

Our expert staff provides training and technical assistance regionally and nationwide on aspects of career development, school-to-work, project planning, work readiness, and curriculum integration. Need assistance designing and delivering training, planning and managing institutes, conferences, workshops, study tours, and site visits? We can help!

Technical assistance can also assist you with pre-planning through evaluation stages, including a needs assessment, capacity building, partnerships, best practices, implementation and assessment.

Sample training topics:

  • Youth development
  • Service-learning
  • Building youth leadership
  • Mentoring
  • Adult-youth partnerships
  • Community projects with youth
  • School-to-work
  • Career development
  • Project-based learning
  • Contextual teaching and learning
  • Work-based learning (internships, career exploration)
  • Pre-employment training for youth
  • School, work and community connections

What past participants say….

"The tools you provided are excellent, and will be easy to use right away."

"You both kept the presentation very interesting and moving. Thanks!"

"Excellent presenters! Easy to listen to, funny, and the examples that were provided really helped."

"This was one of the most meaningful and useful workshops I've been to. Thanks for the time, resources and expertise."

"You were great as a facilitator. Professional, knowledgeable, and full of tools to share."

"The small group work and planning time was fantastic!"

"I appreciated the opportunity to think about working with students and youth in authentic ways. I will definitely take this back to my team to improve the work we do with teens."

For additional information on our training and technical assistance, please contact Eve McDermott, Director, at mcdermoe@nwrel.org. Telephone: (503)275-0757 or toll-free at (800)547-6339 ext. 757