What's Up with Career Street? Career Street Director (and guest blogger) Jennifer Pontzer shares the latest!

Career Street, an Erie Together program that’s been around since 2014, facilitates career exploration experiences for Erie County students in kindergarten through 12th grade. This summer’s been a busy one. Due to the pandemic, we have spent much of our time adapting Career Street offerings to accommodate both in-person and online/virtual career exploration experiences.

Last Spring, at the onset of the COVID-19 “stay at home” mandate, Career Street moved all of its archived Newspapers In Education pieces to the “Resource” section of the Career Street website. This made more than 110 career-focused written interview-style articles available for students to research careers and meet the expectations of graduation from home. Those articles can be found here.

Career Street also created a YouTube channel and has begun populating it with recorded career interviews as well as other virtual career experiences. We are currently working on creating an array of video interviews that can be viewed in lieu of hosting a guest speaker in the classroom. We welcome others to join the fun, by contacting me at jpontzer@careerstreeterie.org to learn more. In the meantime, check out what we have in place now, here.

Another project we’re intimately engaged in is working with the Erie County Career Pathways Alliance to develop more PA state standards-aligned career exploration experience templates that thoroughly guide the student, educator, and employer through in-person and virtual experiences. You can find what we’ve created so far here, and more will be added as they become available. Our goal is to have virtual career experiences for grades K-12 in each of five career pathways: Engineering & Industrial Technology, Science and Health, Business, Finance & Information Technology, Human Services, and Arts & Communication.

School districts will also soon receive Career Street’s “Activity Book,” designed to provide career exploration activities for second and third graders. This resource includes coloring pages and related activities focused on specific careers and industries.  These books will be distributed to all Erie County school districts this fall.  

The pandemic has challenged the world of education beyond its known limits and has created barriers for employers seeking to help shape the future workforce.  Career Street is working hard to find new ways to create much needed educator/employer connections for the benefit of students. We will continue to make adjustments, as needed, to remain a useful and relevant community resource helping prepare local students for future success. For more information, please visit Career Street’s website, or contact me soon!