10/14/16

2016 Educator Guide

Thank you for playing a key role in the success of this valuable career exploration program for your students and 12,000 other 8th graders throughout the RVA region. Mission Tomorrow will be held October 27-28, 2016, at Richmond International Raceway (RIR). Your school district will provide you with a schedule for the day and time of your school’s visit to RIR. We anticipate your visit will last 90 minutes.

The most current version of this guide is available here, and it and other pertinent formsare available on the Mission Tomorrow website, MissionTomorrowRVA.com, under the Educators tab. This guide provides an overview of the event, suggestions on what you should do and could do in advance of the event, what you need to bring to the event, a description of what will happen at the event, and a summary of the follow-up planned after the event.

  1. Overview

The overall purpose of the event is for students to be exposed to a wide range of careers that are available in the Richmond region. We will do this through interactive exhibits that will attract the students’ attention. We also want the students to have conversations with the exhibitors about the wide range of careers that are available within a particular field. To facilitate those discussions, we will provide each student with a card listing the major career clusters represented at the event. In order for students to be eligible to win certain prizes (e.g., electronics, free tickets to Kings Dominion), they must get their cards initialed by one industry exhibitorfrom at least three of the five zones at the event.Exhibitors will be encouraged to sign the cards only after having a brief conversation with a student about careers available within the field. In addition, the school with the highest qualifying card submission rate also will be eligible to win a freeeighth grade field trip to Kings Dominion for a spring Education Day.

If your students will be at RIR around lunch time, we will provide space for about 20-30 minutes before or after the event for them to eat lunch. Lunches and beverages will notbe provided by Mission Tomorrow; providing lunches to be eaten at RIR will be left to students and/or the school system, as determined by the school system. Most schoolshave elected to eat lunch at your school before or after the event. Details about lunch will be communicated to you by your school division. Water will be available at various locations for all students, whether or not they are eating lunch at RIR.

Exhibitors at the event will be organized so that similar types of careers are located in the same area. We will allocate all the exhibitors to one of five zones. Students will spend about 15 minutes in each zone, during which they may visit any of the exhibits within that zone. At the end of that time period, they will move to the next zone and may not return to a previous zone.

  1. Resources for the Event

The most current version of all resources are available by clicking on the links below and throughout this document or on the MissionTomorrowRVA.com website, under the Educators tab.

  • Map of RIR, showing bus flow and parking and car parking
  • Layout of Zones and Career Clusters at the event
  • Busroll sheet
  • Permission slips (supplied by school systems; not on website)
  • Pre-Event Letter for parents
  • Student video about the event (one minute)
  • Student Career Interests Worksheet
  • Student Career Guide
  • Post-event letter for parents
  • Explanation of Kings Dominion Career Education Day Experience and Drawing
  1. Things To Do Before the Event
  1. Review this Educator Guide to get a feel for the event.
  2. Show students the short video prepared by Henrico schools to give an introduction to the event.
  3. Discuss the idea of selecting a career based on a student’s likes and strengths. Use the accompanying Student Career Interests Worksheetto help a student focus on his/her strengths.
  4. Great career resources to share with students:
  1. Career Guide:
  1. Virginia Wizard (career planning tool): vawizard.org
  1. Invest in What’s Next (career planning tool): investinwhatsnext.org
  1. Career and Technical Planning Resources: cteresource.org
  1. Obtain permission slips for all students attending the event (on forms supplied by the school system)
  1. Transportation

The time for your school to attend the event has been selected in conjunction with your school system. You do not need to do anything to register students for the event. Transportation will be provided by your school system, and the timing of the bus transportation will be controlled and communicated to you by them.

Buses will enter RIR at the Service Gate and drop students at the designated drop off point. See Bus Map. Drivers should provide a name and cell phone number to the Mission Tomorrow volunteer. If the students are eating lunch at RIR, the volunteer will give instructions on how to drop off lunches. Buses will then be parked in the designated bus parking area, and bus drivers may wait in the area designated for bus drivers. Drivers will be called 10-15 minutes before the students are finished, and should then take their buses to the designated pickup point. Buses will then depart through the main gate of RIR.

The lead teacher/chaperone on each bus will be responsible for bringing two copies of the completedbus rolllisting names of everyone on the bus. Volunteers will collect both copies as you arrive at RIR, so please have them completed before you arrive.

  1. At the Event

Once a bus reaches the student drop-off point, aMission Tomorrow volunteer will enter the bus and brief the students about the event. You will also be introduced to a volunteer navigator who will stay with your group throughout the event and will work with teachers and chaperones to move students from one area to another at the appropriate times. All volunteers should be wearing similarly colored event T-shirts, so be sure to ask them if you need assistance.

Colored lanyards will be handed out to all students and teacher/chaperones. The entire bus will have the same color lanyard, as may other buses immediately before or after your bus. As you progress through the event, all students and staff wearing the same color lanyard will move from one area to another at about the same time.

Students and teachers/chaperones will exit the bus and generally will be led by a volunteer to the staging area to enter the event.If your school has elected to eat lunch at RIR prior to the Mission Tomorrow event, you will first be directed to the lunch area.

Once students enter the building, they will receive a welcome briefing in the lobby. Depending on the flow of students at the time, there may be a short wait (and opportunity to use restrooms) before the welcome briefing.

After the briefing, students will enter the first of five zones. A map of the zones will be available for teachers. In most cases, students will have 15 minutes to engage in any of the activities/booths within each zone and to get their career cluster cards signed. The volunteer navigator will know the exact schedule for moving your group to the next zone. At the end of the 15 minutes, the navigators and teacher/chaperones will gather all the students with the same colored lanyards and move them to the next zone. Once you have completed a zone, you may not go back to a prior zone. There will be multiple groups with different color lanyards in a zone at the same time,so it will be important to check lanyard colors to keep your group together while moving from zone to zone.

The career clusters will be organized in the various zones as follows:

ZONE 1Architecture, Construction, & Trades

Human Services

Art, AV, & Communications

ZONE 2Law and Public Safety

Manufacturing

ZONE 3Utilities

Health Sciences

ZONE 4Hospitality & Tourism

Finance

ZONE 5Government & Public Administration

Transportation

IT

STEM

Rest rooms and water stations will be available at the transition points between some of the zones. A first-aid station and information desk will also be situated near the front door of the front lobby.

  1. End of Event

After exiting the last zone, the students’ initialed career cluster cards will be collected. All students who completed the cards and accumulated the required number of signatures will be eligible for a drawing for electronic prizes. In addition, 3 students from each school will win free tickets to Kings Dominion. Finally, the school with the highest qualifying card submission rate will be eligible to win an eighth grade field trip to Kings Dominion for a spring Education Day.

If students will be eating lunch after the event at RIR, they will be directed to the lunch area at this time.

Students will board the buses at the student pick-up point.

  1. After the Event

After the event is over, we have asked your Superintendent or other school system official to send an email to parents and students about the event. The email will include a link to theStudent Career Guide. The point of the email is to stimulate discussion between students and parents/guardians about careers. A limited number of hard copies of this information will be available upon request for you to handout to families that may not have access to email.

Please take the opportunity to work discussion of this event and these resources into your curriculum following the event.

  • One possible activity would be to have each student pick a career cluster of interest to him/her, select 2 or 3 career positions shown in theStudent Career Guide, and then list the salary range and educational requirements for those careers. The point of this exercise is to see the range of careers available in a field, the range of salaries, and the rough correlation to educational background.
  • Additional resources for students:
  1. Career Guide:
  1. Virginia Wizard (career planning tool): vawizard.org
  1. Invest in What’s Next (career planning tool): investinwhatsnext.org
  1. Career and Technical Planning Resources: cteresource.org

CTE Contacts for School Divisions

Charles City
Wendy L. Cauley
Director of Teaching, Learning and Accountability
804-652-4651

Jessica Hornsby
School Counselor
804-829-9249
/ Chesterfield
David Eshelman
Director of Career and Technical Education
804-639-8668

Goochland
Bruce Watson
Director of Career and Technical Education
804-556-5613
/ Hanover
Justin Roerink
Principal of The Hanover Center for Trades and Technology
804.723.2020

Barb Hancock-Henley
Coordinator for Career and Technical Education
804.365.4532

Henrico
Fahryka Elliott
CTE Educational Specialist
804-781-1812
/ New Kent
R. Byron Bishop
Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction
804-966-9636

Powhatan
Jason Tibbs
Co-Principal – PMS
PCPS – Career and Technical Education
804-598-5720
/ Richmond
Barbara Smith
Director of Career and Technical Education/Adult Education
804-780-6472
Email:

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