Question: What Role Should Work Play In Your Lives?
A great question for your students to ponder before diving into your Career unit. The impetus for this question came from a story I heard on the Marketplace podcast:
While listening, ask your students to listen:
- What were the common themes that the reporter found most interesting when researching these 100 different jobs?
- What insight came from the McDonald’s employee in Iowa?
- What was the inspiring insight that the reporter gleaned about the importance of work in people’s lives? Do you agree with her on this point?
Here’s a good activity to develop your students’ critical thinking and reading skills:
- Go to Inside Jobs article on the The Atlantic website.
- Use this graphical organizer to complete the activity.
- Pick three jobs that interest you as potential careers and read the interviews from the article
- Answer these questions after reading each interview:
- What factors influenced how the interviewee ended up in their career?
- What education or skills are required to succeed at the job?
- Does the interviewee seem to enjoy their job? Why or why not?
- What surprised you the most as you read through the interview?
- Are you more or less interested in the role? Why?
- Pick two jobs that you are curious about and complete the graphical organizer on page 2.
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Check out this interactive from our Interactive Library: How Is the Way We Work Changing?
About the Author
Tim Ranzetta
Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.
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