Guest Blogger Series: Career Success 101 - How to Plan a Career Tour

Editors Note: This blog is part of a series of guest contributors from the National school-based agricultural education family. Ms. Jaysa Fillmore is a 7th year Agricultural science teacher and FFA advisor who currently works at Cassia Alternative High School in Burley, Idaho.  CHS is one of the few agriscience programs in alternative schools in Idaho and Ms. Fillmore started it the program in 2014. She is the current Idaho Vocational Agriculture Teachers Association secretary and the Idaho FFA Service Learning Coordinator. She is currently a CASE Master Teacher and has been a lead teacher since 2011.  She lives in Paul, ID with husband Richard and two daughters age 3 & 5.

"FFA makes a positive difference in the lives of students by developing their potential for premier leadership, personal growth, and career success through agricultural education." The FFA Mission. 

We all know it and we strive to put it into practice in our agricultural education programs. What exactly does it mean to "develop their potential for career success"? We prepare great lessons, we invite guest speakers to our classes, and we encourage students to train for Career Development Events, but how do we expose students to the real careers we are preparing them for? A career tour is a great way to introduce students to new careers in an interesting and engaging way.

Students visit a Pacific Ethanol plant to learn about fermentation and ethanol production. The plant manager describes the automated monitoring system that keeps the plant running at optimum efficiency. The ethanol plant offers good benefits and some of the highest paying entry level careers in the area.

1. Plan ahead! 
Pick a few date options for your career tour at least one month in advance. Career tours can be one tour during one class period or a full day with multiple stops. You could even plan a multi day event! Determine the size and scope of your career tour including how many stops you'd like to make and how many students you want to include. A group of 25 or less is ideal. If you have more students, consider separating tour groups onto separate buses with rotating tour stops. This obviously takes more planning and coordination, but as someone who has planned a full day, four bus event for 100 students, it is totally worth it!

2. Form a list of potential tour stops.
Talk to your local chamber of commerce, economic development committee, elected leaders, fellow teachers, advisory committee, or civic groups to get ideas. Create a big list and include any contacts already have. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• food processing plants
• commodity handling facilities
• commercial greenhouses
• production livestock or crop operations
• agrifinance companies
• co-ops
• agricultural equipment manufacturing or repair
• government entities- USDA, Forest Service, BLM
• agriservice businesses- ag electricians, ag transportation, commodity inputs, veterinarians
• agricultural laboratories or Extension research facilities 

2. Contact the tour locations.

If you have a contact person at the tour location, start there. If not, make a cold call. Introduce yourself as an ag teacher and FFA advisor. Ask who you should talk to about setting up a tour for your high school students. You may have to leave a message. Keep detailed notes on all of your calls- who you talked to, who you left a message for, when you left a message, etc. Once you get in touch with someone who can schedule your tour, discuss the date options you have selected. Don't schedule a tour, yet. Ask what days and times work best for the tour host and get several options from them. Ask how long the tour will take from arrival to departure. Ask how many students the host can accommodate. Will you have to break your students into groups? Take detailed notes!

3. Put together the itinerary.

After you've talked to enough tour locations to fill your tour schedule, start putting together an itinerary. Make sure to account for time to load, unload, and travel between stops. Leave a little wiggle room at each stop. It's better to be early than late! Make time in the schedule for lunch.

4. Confirm the tour stops.

Now that you have an itinerary, call the tour hosts back to confirm the tour times. Make adjustments to your itinerary if needed. Ask about tour protocol like clothing or shoe requirements, check in procedures, etc. Schedule transportation for your career tour. Prepare for a guest teacher. Create permission slips and recruit chaperones. Consider having enough chaperones to accompany any small groups that need to be created at tour stops.

5. Plan for lunch.

If you're planning an all day career tour, consider asking the chamber of commerce, a local bank, civic organization, or local government to host your students for lunch. Many of these groups have access to large conference rooms and would welcome the opportunity to buy your students pizza and soda and talk about their business or organization. If you need to eat lunch en route, sack lunches may be the way to go.

Idaho Fish and Game Biologist shows students how to collect and separate sagebrush seed for habitat restoration. Wildfires in Idaho destroy thousands of acres of rangeland each year and Fish and Game employees are tasked with collecting seed in the fall and planting seedlings each spring. Their careers keep them outdoors most of the time.

6. Prep your students.

The week before the career tour, tell your students about the tour stops. Guide students in researching the host sites. Discuss the types of careers they may see in action. Talk about tour etiquette and help students formulate good questions for their guides. Collect permission slips and remind chaperones about the tour.

7. Tour time!

We can all agree that days like these are one of the reasons why we became ag educators! Enjoy the career tours with your students. Learn right along with them. Bring business cards to exchange with tour guides and hosts. Take lots of pictures but be sure to follow tour protocol on cameras!

A project manager for Kloepfer Concrete and Asphalt talks to freshmen on a career tour. He encouraged students to seek out after school internships with his company if they were interested in a career operating heavy equipment.

8. Reflect on the experience.

Create a career tour reflection assignment and encourage students to write about their favorite tour, careers they learned about, and people they met. Teach students how to write good thank you notes and send them to the hosts. Create a press release for the newspaper highlighting your students' experiences or write a letter to the editor acknowledging the tour hosts. Post your pictures to social media and tag hosts if possible.

The USDA estimates that there will be 57,900 high-skilled job openings annually in the food, agriculture, renewable natural resources, and environment fields in the United States and only 35,400 new U.S. graduates to fill those positions. Our students may not even realize the types of careers available in agriculture and seeing them first hand while on a career tour is a great way to open their eyes to the career possibilities in agriculture. If we plan to feed 9 billion people by 2050, we need all the help we can get!

Submitted by: 
Ms. Jaysa Fillmore
Idaho Agriscience Teacher
filjaysa@cassiaschools.org
@mrsagteacher