North Valley Charter Academy Students Experience Enhanced Career Guidance with My10yearPlan.com® Interactive

Chris Pulos, Career Choices lead teacher at North Valley Charter Academy in Granada Hills, California, first heard about My10YearPlan.com® Interactive at the 2010 Focus on Freshmen conference and was very excited about the prospect of an online tool that would interact with and assist students in the creation of 10-year education and career plans. Wanting to utilize such a resource in his classes immediately, he applied to beta test this new online enhancement to the Career Choices curriculum.

Pulos observed that the interactive aspect and the visual appeal of My10YearPlan.com® Interactive kept students involved in the material and helped fuel their excitement for the course.

“They are more intent on reading everything on the screen because pop-ups would show up, like a video game, and it was a little more fun to work with,” he says. “I think that meant a lot to the students and they got a little more out of the class because of it.”

This, in turn, motivated students to put more effort into the activities and take ownership of their work.

“When they saw how the bull’s eye chart came up when they finished entering in the data and they could look at it, they would start putting more stuff in,” Pulos says. “The more eye-appealing it was, the more work they put into it. They took it on almost like an art project, to put in as many words as possible in there, and it really drove them to do more work.”

The pop-ups in My10YearPlan.com® Interactive encourage students to reflect on and revise their previous answers, which increases the likelihood that they will reach the best career and life decisions conceivable. It also introduces students to the process of continually re-evaluating their decisions and potentially changing direction that they will likely use time and time again.

“I say, you may think that this job, this life is the end-all, be-all, but every now and then you have a curveball thrown your way and something changes,” Pulos says. “You have to have that Plan B.”

Pulos had planned his class around having access to computers several times a week, but he was forced to rethink these plans when nearly a quarter of the school’s laptops were stolen.

“We started behind the 8-ball because someone decided to liberate 14 of our 60 laptops through a window in the middle of the night one night last summer,” Pulos recalls. “We’re still trying to get those replaced so we’re really short-handed.”

Since Pulos had to rent laptops from the school’s limited supply for use in his class, students only used My10YearPlan.com® Interactive at scheduled times once or twice a week, after completing the activities in the Workbook & Portfolio. Making sure the workbook activities were finished first helped the class flow smoothly and ensured that everyone was on the same page. Pulos also feels that the writing aspect in itself is beneficial to the students’ thought process.

“Kids need to write as much as possible,” he says. “Typing is good, but they still need to know how to put a pen to a paper, so I make sure they do that, then we switch it over to My10YearPlan.com®.”

Even if computer access is an issue, Pulos warns against having students work online for large chunks of time. To keep students focused, he recommends splitting a class period between My10YearPlan.com® and other activities.

“If you put the entire hour to being on the computer you’d maybe get 20 or 30 minutes worth of work out of them and the rest of the time they’re trying to screw around and go on the Internet and look up different stuff. If you can get 20 or 30 minutes of work out of them, then put the computers away and do something in the book, that seemed to help.”

Regardless of how long students are on computer, the teacher should take care to monitor their online activities in the event that all students are not on task.

“Position yourself so that you can walk around and see each of the computers. Make sure that you’re able to supervise what they’re doing, what they’re listening to, what they’re watching, and you need to learn that computer stare— where they have the computer turned on and they’re just sitting there not doing anything.”

Despite what Pulos refers to as “typical kids-on-the-computer stuff,” he feels that My10YearPlan.com® Interactive holds the students’ attention extremely well.

The pop-ups and everything on the beta test were fantastic, they answered a lot of the questions, and the kids got more out of it,” he says. “They remained more engrossed in the material presented and therefore did not get bored and start talking to their neighbors. It was also easier for them to put together their portfolios.”

Still, the advanced advisory capabilities of My10YearPlan.com® Interactive do not eliminate the need for an engaging teacher to connect with the students. The power of a personal connection with the teacher in inspiring students to care about the class cannot be underestimated.

“You want to put your most experienced teachers in there, and I’m not the most experienced person as a teacher—I’m only going into my sixth year of teaching and I’m late to the game,” Pulos says. “But what I bring and what I think helps me be a success is I have a lot of outside experience. I’ve had a lot of growing up. I have a lot of stuff that I bring to the table and I really am open with the students about what I’ve done. I tell personal stories and they appreciate the fact that I’m open with them that way.”

Between the Career Choices curriculum, My10YearPlan.com® Interactive, and his stellar instruction, Pulos’s students have matured tremendously. They have acquired an accurate understanding of the world, which has ignited their dedication to education as an essential step toward attaining their ideal adult lifestyles.

“Reality hit them when they hit the budget [chapter] and they realized how much money it would cost to live the way that they were thinking,” Pulos says. “It just opened their minds up. They didn’t get depressed, they got mature. You could tell they were kind of slapped in the face by how much things were going to cost, and then they seemed to grow up.”

At the end of the class, students had obtained a level of wisdom about life and about themselves that many adults have either learned in a more difficult way or are still lacking.

“Anytime I mention this class to anybody, they say, ‘I wish we had that class when I was in school. I wish I could take your class, can I take your class?’” Pulos says. “It’s amazing. A lot of people don’t know this stuff.”

Though teenagers may be too young to realize the need for this class before they take it, they are old enough to recognize the importance of the material once they are exposed to it yet still young enough, in most cases, to make the right decisions the first time around as a result of the knowledge they have gained. My10YearPlan.com® Interactive improves upon the Career Choices curriculum in achieving these results with its captivating, interactive format and its emphasis on the role of contemplation in informed decision-making.

“When they were doing their book work at the beginning of the year they were just going through it like, ‘My passions? I like texting.’ What else? ‘That’s it,’” Pulos recalls. “But at the end of the year they’re sitting there and they’re running out of room on their paper because they’re taking it seriously. They’re grown up and they’ve realized the importance of their decisions.”