At this time in your life you are experiencing many physical and emotional changes which can sometimes leave a person feeling confused and even alone. All of this is happening at the same time that you are being asked to make decisions which will affect the rest of your life. The purpose of this course is to give you support while you are exploring the choices available to you, and to give you some skills which might become useful tools for decision-making.
You will be taking this course online in the "virtual" classroom. The teacher and the text book are the Web pages which you will access through your ID and password for this course.
You will have helpers as you go along:
Your Course Facilitator is the person at your school whom you will contact if you are having difficulties with the course content.
Your Mentor is the person in your community with whom you will have face-to-face discussions about some of the content in this course.
Selection of your Mentor is very important and should be done early in the course. Look carefully at the information contained in the Student/Mentor Log pages.
Many of the activities in this course are based on research via the Internet or on role-playing or problem solving with your Mentor. Discussions with your Mentor are recorded in the Mentor/Student Log. Other activities include short pencil and paper activities, the results of which will be filed in your Personal Portfolio.
There is one Major Project associated with CaPP 9 which will involve planning and carrying out an activity which will benefit your home/community.
For purposes of this course, your Personal Portfolio takes the place of your class notebook. For many activities in the course you will store the results in an electronic file and post it to your Personal Portfolio. The main Personal Portfolio (PP) page gives you instructions on how to do this. If you have taken previous courses in the distributed learning format, the instructions for accessing your Personal Portfolio will seem familiar to you. Take a few minutes now to set up your own Personal Portfolio using the instructions provided with the link above. .
From time to time, you will need to do a "house cleaning" in your PP and remove items which you no longer need. You will use some items to do a second activity, and others may be placed in more permanent storage in your electronic Student Learning Plan. It is then often possible to remove the first documents, or set of notes, from the portfolio and discard them.
The Student Learning Plan is the legal document that travels with from grade to grade until you leave high school, when you will receive it for your own. This document includes:
One of the first things you will do in CaPP 9 is to set up or update your own Student Learning Plan depending on whether or not your SLP is already in the electronic format. At times you will be asked to do a specific activity in your SLP, but it is your responsibilty to keep it current and up to date, so plan on looking at it and making necessary changes every month or 6 weeks. Without an up-to-date Student Learning Plan you cannot receive a grade for this course.
You all will end up somewhere in life even if you do not set goals, but it may not be someplace you would choose to be. People who plan their futures are more apt to enjoy their lives. Learning to set goals, and to create and follow an Action Plan to see that one's goals are met, is an important part of CaPP 9. You will find a Sample Action Plan within your Student Learning Plan. You will also be aware that your goals may change or you may run into obstacles along the way so that your Action Plan may have to be altered as you go along.
Your Student Learning Plan contains your Personal, Education, and Career goals and action plans to achieve these goals.
Your last place for electronic storage of information is your Mentor/Student Log where you record dates and topics discussed when you meet from time to time with your mentor.
All 3 of the electronic documents can be read only by you and your course Facilitator. You are the only person able to make changes in any of these documents, but there are places where your Facilitator may add comments in your SLP and your Mentor/Student Log.
| Student Learning Plan |
20%
|
| Personal Portfolio |
25%
|
| Student/Mentor Log |
15%
|
| Job Shadow |
15%
|
| Major Project |
25%
|
| TOTAL |
100%
|
Electronic documents in the Personal Portfolio are marked complete or incomplete.
The CaPP Major Project receives a letter grade.
The final mark for CaPP 9 is on a holistic scale:
| A | Outstanding, superior, met all the criteria, excellent quality |
| B | Very Good, met all the criteria, quality work |
| C | Acceptable, satisfactory, met most of the criteria |
| INC | Incomplete -- making progress, criteria not yet met |
The course objectives for this course are the Learning Outcomes stated in the Ministry of Education Integrated Resource Package for Career and Personal Planning K-12.
In less formal language, the Course Objectives for CaPP 9 are to help you to:
We hope you will enjoy participating in this course in an on-line environment. One of the problems that this course often has in schools is that much of the learning involved is both personal and private -- it may not be the type of learning that you can comfortably share with other students. On the other hand, discussing issues with other students in an in-class environment can often help us clarify our thoughts. For home schoolers, class discussions are virtually impossible. Therefore, the mentor and course facilitator have to assume these roles. In various parts of the course we have linked you to on-line counselors -- usually peer counselors who are about your own age -- where you can post electronic questions and get personal responses.
You may still have questions that have not been answered through these facilities. If this is the case, pleae contact your distance education school, where a counselor will be available to answer specific questions.