Skillsusa Career Explorations 7Th and 8Th Grade

SkillsUSA Career Explorations 7th and 8th Grade

A SkillsUSA chapter is used as an umbrella organization to help manage clubs in your classroom. It creates a student run leadership structure. The chapter structure puts the majority of the responsibility for individual clubs on the students themselves.

I currently run Morning Announcements, Robotics Club, Dragster Club and the Year Book. I use the SkillsUSA Chapter structure to manage each of these clubs. Each club either elects officers or they are appointed by me depending on the makeup of the group. I don’t refer to them as officers as SkillsUSA does I give them titles such as producer (Morning Announcements), Publisher (Year Book) and Head Engineer (Robotics), etc. These “officers” along with one alternate student from each group are who I interact with 90%. All problems, questions, etc. go through the individual club “officers” first. The “officers” are responsible for meeting deadlines, making sure others in the group are completing their task and so on.

The two “officers” from each club are part of the SkillsUSA council. This council theoretically will meet and make broad decisions affecting all clubs. This could be to raise money, promote the clubs, community/campus service, etc. All of the groups either meet during class time or at lunch. I try to have all of the students who are members of the various clubs in my elective class, but that is not always the case. I don’t meet with any students after school.

This same structure could be used for every one of your TLC classes. Break your class into groups, have the groups elect presidents, vice presidents, etc. The presidents/vice presidents from each group are who you interact with 90% of the time. The president and vice president from each group could then be members of the council.

You can organize you’re SkillsUSA group as a club and do fund raisers. I’ve also found that PTSO’s and tax credit money are great places to find funds for your group also.

The SkillsUSA championship is used as a reward for members of all groups. Those students that have gone above or beyond are given the opportunity to compete in the championship. These students are given time during TLC class, their elective time and lunch to prepare. Occasionally I’ll let outside students compete if one of the competitions fits their skills. The contests are below. Unfortunately Descriptions for the below contests aren’t available yet.

Career Exploration Contests (grades 7-8 or 9th in some districts)

Bridge Building

CO2 Dragster

Dome Construction

Model Building

Rocketry

Safety Poster

SimCity

Solar Sprint

Technology Poster