What is the Green Career Awareness Program?
A student's career education should begin before they get to high school.
Early exposure to careers - specifically green careers - and the opportunity to explore California's industry sectors and their shifts toward environmentally-sustainable and socially-responsible practices will encourage students to use those lenses when making decisions about their post-secondary plans and life choices.
To achieve our goal, SMCOE's College, Career, and CTE team has partnered with various curriculum designers and industry partners to create a K-12 "Green Career Awareness" Program. Our program includes numerous, standards-aligned Project-Based Learning instructional modules that help students move from theory to action, "Green Careers" field trips that directly engage students with local business partners, and a high school "Green Careers" course and pre-apprenticeship program. Our vision is to work with school districts across San Mateo County and California to improve our students' green career and Career Technical Education (CTE) awareness, bolster the connections among K-12 systems, two-and-four year colleges, trade schools, and our industry sectors, and to help usher our students toward critical-demand, high-wage careers in a green workforce.
SMCOE's program helps improve students' green career awareness at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. In elementary school, students are provided with a broad view of systems and learn how to create environmentally-sustainable solutions. At the middle school level, students learn about climate change and ecological overshoot, how specific industry sectors are responding to those issues, engage with design challenges to create their own solutions, learn about green careers in those industry sectors, and take "Green Careers" field trips to learn about local, sustainable businesses and the people that work there. In high school, students can enroll in the "Roots of Success" pre-apprenticeship program and attend "Green Careers" field trips with the Sustainable Future Outdoor Academy.
Sustainable Future Outdoor Academy’s (SFOA) Green Careers “Sustainable Foods” Field Trip
Sustainable Future Outdoor Academy organizes career education field trips in concert with local sustainable businesses, taking students outdoors into the field to find out what green careers are really like by seeing business operations up close, speaking with owners and employees, and getting hands-on with tastings, demos, and other hands-on activities.
Schools will be able to choose among three field trips for their students: (1) Sustainable Food Systems (in progress); (2) Clean Energy (Fall 2023); and (3) Green Buildings (Spring 2024).