JA Biztown

Starting my first year with fifth graders was nerve wracking. I have followed my learning support students starting in third grade and now they are in fifth. To get students prepared to be more responsible in the middle school and in the future, our entire fifth grade class goes through a program called BizTown. The students start by electing a mayor. Students write speeches and do the speeches in front of the entire grade. After selecting a mayor, teachers introduce every job and the description of the job.

Students then have to fill out an application on which job they would like to have in JA Biztown. Then members from the staff, including myself, interview the students individually. We then sit down and put students in jobs based on their interviews and skill level. The students are then split up into different classrooms with the people that work in the specific shops. The people in the shop then work together to prepare for the day at Biztown. The students make their shop poster, their slogan, and create a radio ad to be played throughout Biztown. Students also are told how much money they will make at their job and have to prepare by writing checks to the bank in order to get their money. They even have to pay taxes to the town. The shops include: The Restaurant, The Radio Station, The Television Station, The Construction Zone, The Realty Office, Planet Earth, City Hall, The Wellness Center, The Bank, The Distribution Center, The Print Shop, and The Newspaper Center.

On the day of Biztown, there is a town hall meeting and a volunteer in each station. The students are to find their folders with their labeled title and follow the instructions for the day. Students are given breaks depending on their jobs for food and then to shop. If students do not sell enough of their materials they are not able to make their rent for the day. This year, thirteen out of thirteen stores made their rent after a long day of work. The owner and director of Biztown said that it does not happen every day. We were so proud of our students.

This program was new to me and made the day stressful, because chaperones are there to assist, but not complete the students’ jobs. However, I took a step back and had the students complete the jobs themselves. It was a successful day that all students should go through. We debriefed after and the students could not believe how tough the day was. They kept asking,  “Is this what real life is like?” Students got to experience what a job is like first-hand. It was a great opportunity for our students.

Changes in Career Development

     In this week discussion post each person has spoken about their experiences in how they attained their competencies through school. It appeared that a few people, like me, did not have much assistance in becoming competent in many career areas through school, but did so on their own. It was also evidence that many others had great success in becoming competent in their career development due to amazing programs through their schools. Some examples of these programs include job shadowing, taking college courses, and touring vocational schools. We each took different paths to become competent, and because we took different paths, we succeeded on different timelines.
     I think what really stood out to me was reading a classmates post about being older than most people in our class and experiencing her career development more different than any other classmates. When she was finding her career path, she did not have the Internet, and they did not even regard gender roles as a thing to break. I could not imagine trying to navigate careers without the assistance of the Internet. We have the answers at our fingertips just by accessing O*NET. Googling a simple phrase or key words can produce a mass amount of information. I utilized the Internet when I found myself on a career path I was unsure of and I was able to find answers and determine what I wanted to do. Without the Internet, I am not sure how I would have gone about finding the answer.
     I think it is extremely important that the other student brought up gender roles in career development. Thirty or so years ago, gender roles were things that most people accepted. Most people probably simply accept gender roles now. But I think more and more individuals are breaking out of those stereotypical gender-specific career paths and it is great! It allows for individuals to have those options without feeling stuck or wanting to go into another career path, but felt confined. The simplest example I think of is a man wanting to be a nurse. Many people see nursing as a woman's profession, but this idea is evolving. I think you can still see gender roles being prominent in that it is hard for women to break into CEO roles, but this too is slowly changing.
     I think it is important to recognize that interventions and ways about finding a career path will change over time because of changes in technology and the changes in society in general. I think that the career development process will be an ever-changing one to keep up with the times. I believe that it is important to recognize that what people in the generation after us will go through a different career process, and that the generation before us went through a different process as well. It will be interesting to see how changes will occur.

ASCA Model and My Experience

The theme for this week’s discussion topic is “Designing and Implementing Comprehensive K-12 Career Development Programs within the Framework of the ASCA National Model,” (Brown, 2005, p. 256). The ASCA Model of Career Development contains what are thought to be the “essential elements of a quality and effective school counseling program,” (Brown, 2005, p. 258). The model includes a concise description of effective ways to implement an inclusive and effective school-counseling program. The model also contains a listing of competencies the student should have acquired from the school-counseling program (Brown, 2005).

The ASCA Model made me reflect back on my own personal K-12 career development experience.  However, unlike most of my fellow peers and classmates, my K-12 education was unique. My K-12 career development experience is not the result of the strengths and weaknesses of one school system, but five different school systems, in four different states, ranging as far apart as Maine to Virginia.

My career development educational experience can be described in two words: diverse and adaptable. I began my educational experience in Springfield, Massachusetts.   After only one year, I moved to Bethel, Maine, a very small ski resort town, where I was one of nine students.  Next, I moved to Dayton, Ohio where I attended one year in the Centerville County Public School system.  For the next six years, I was a student in the Springboro County Public School System. My final move and the farthest south was to Richmond, Virginia.  I spent the next five years in one of the most challenging school systems in the state of Virginia, Hanover County. I would come to call Atlee High School my home until graduation in the spring of 2011. I was, then, honored to attend college in Farmville, Virginia at Longwood University.

 I always knew I would go on to attend college after high school.  However as I reflect back on my diverse and adaptable career development, I began to wonder how exactly did I get there? Was the national ASCA Model for school counseling designed, implemented, and effectively delivered in all my school systems? My answer is yes, but in varying ways.

The ASCA Model contains four components: foundation, delivery, accountability, and management system (Brown, 2005, p. 258).  I believe the foundation, accountability, and management systems for all five of the schools was rooted in the same beliefs, missions, and principles. However, I believe the delivery systems were different. In some school systems, the guidance counselors developed their own plans and others it was incorporated in the teachers’ lessons. (Brown, 2005).

My K-12 educational experience could be summarized as that of an “educational melting pot.”  However thanks to the national ASCA Model, my education may have been diverse, but very consistent and beneficial to my career development.

Career Portfolio

The career portfolio seems to be a common practiced for high school students. In my own high school as part of our graduation project we were required to complete a career portfolio. I thought the project was helpful in researching a career that I was interested. Although I found it to be a helpful project others did not. I know a lot of my peers just did what was needed to pass. The article that I read talked about some things that occur when students (middle -class) are required to complete the portfolio assignment.

            Researchers had several findings. One finding was that students in this specific study where able to understand their environments and the ideals that go along with it. This meant that students were more like to select a career that was expected of them for their career portfolio. Instead of students using the career portfolio to investigate the students possible interest they instead chose an “easy” or “expected” career. This didn’t always align with their interested and instead just fit into the ideals of their environment.

The portfolio project can be helpful when it is done “correctly”. It can be an opportunity for students to explore and learn about what is required to enter a certain profession. I know personally I was able to find a lot of information about the field of psychology by completing my own career portfolio. I guess this study brings up the question, what can be done to get students to take full advantage of the career portfolio assignment? Also, how can we get students really interested in the project and for them to research something that they’re interested in versus what is expected of them by others? 

Blog 12

            After this week’s discussion post I felt that for this blog it would be relevant to spend some more time discussing my high school experiences with career development services. When I reflect back on my high school experiences I find myself wishing that there had been more services that allowed students to explore career options. My high school did do some things very well, but they also dropped the ball in critical areas.

            First, the positives. My high school did allow students to choose elective courses. These courses ranged from a foreign language, to home economics, to technology education, to psychology, and many more. My high school also had a variety of sports programs, clubs, honors societies, extracurricular activities, etc. that students could sign up to participate in. The combination of these factors did allow students to explore different areas of interest and potentially make decisions based off of their experiences. When I was in school I took full advantage of what was offered to us. I played volleyball, managed the basketball team, was in both Spanish Honors Society and National Honors Society, participated in our school pride club, and chose many different classes to explore many options, one of which was psychology. These opportunities did help in the decisions that I made to go to college and pursue a Psychology degree.

            However, despite the positives, through what I have learned in this class, there was a lot my high school did not prepare us for. Although they offered these various elective courses and many after school programs, there was not much done beyond that. I never took any interest inventory, we did not have any career days or visitors that discussed our options, I could not even tell you what the guidance counselors names were, and there were no options for experiential learning. Many of my peers talk about a senior project involving volunteer work. I wish my senior project was more future oriented, but my assignment was to reflect back on my time there. I look back and wish that my school had done more to allow a more expansive exploration process.

            This class has made me feel conflicted about my experiences. On one hand, I wish that I had more services while in high school, and on the other hand I feel grateful to have had the experiences I did have. I often wonder if anything was different, would my path had been any different? 

Insights of Standards and Competencies

From my own personal experience, I believe I have met all of the standards and competencies. The career developing process began in middle school where I went to school. My middle school was just for seventh and eighth grade. We were offered a multitude of classes to decipher our own interests and skills. We were also taught the differences in traditional and nontraditional classes. These classes included home education, technology education, along with the other typical courses such as math, reading, history, and science. During this time, I could cancel out any of the technology education courses and the home education courses because I was not interested in them. I focused more of my time on sports throughout middle school. I started sports when I was about four years old. I started dancing, then moved to gymnastics, then finally volleyball and basketball. I was able to develop hobbies and balance my time between work and my hobbies; it took great amounts of planning to make my schedule and create a balance. All other competencies were learned from either my sports teams or other teachers and the guidance counselor. By being on a team, I recognized the importance of working as a team and setting goals. I was able to learn about these skills and apply them right away since it fit my interests.

High school was where the actual planning began for a future career, specifically in ninth grade. With all of my sports teams, I believe many of the standards were met. I gained employability skills such as working on a team, organizational skills, and task management skills. I was able to learn the importance of responsibility and punctuality; my team counted on me and I was representative of them. I needed to show them respect in order to gain theirs. I learned to respect other individual’s uniqueness and could transfer this skill to any context. I always had a positive outlook on working. When I was young, my father would take me into his office and I would pretend to work for him. As I got older, he trusted me to answer the phones on the days I did not have school. I loved being able to learn and use set skills to help my father and his business. The only standard that was not met in ninth grade but was met in eleventh grade was creating a resume.

Moving on to tenth grade was where the search for careers began. We took an online quiz that produced three different careers that matched our personalities and interests. I cannot remember all of my outcomes but I remember interior designer was one and another was occupational therapist. Later, we needed to research one of the careers and present the information to the class. I chose to report on the occupation of occupational therapy. A couple months later I actually needed physical therapy for an injury and I loved the atmosphere and everything that came with the job. This became my ultimate goal at this age. I recognized my abilities for this career and shadowed multiple places to find comfort in the profession. With this goal in mind, I chose a university that offered a physical therapy program. Unfortunately I did not find happiness in that school so I transferred and ended up at Millersville. While at Millersville, I still had the goal of becoming a physical therapist. During a class, I was given an opportunity to intern with kids over summer and this is where I changed my career goal. I then catered my schedule to fit the needs of becoming a clinical psychologist.

Through all of my job experiences and the help of this class, I have gained the knowledge and met all competencies of Standard C. I can appropriately resolve conflict, use high quality interpersonal skills, and understand success and satisfaction. I believe all of my experiences in sports and previous jobs along with my education will lead me to reach success in my career.

K-12 experience and competencies

When reading over the competencies, there were a lot of things I experienced that I was not necessarily aware of. I always think doing discussion posts that require you to reflect make you realize more about career development then you thought occurred. Looking at these competencies, I realized that career development actually starts young and progresses as students get older. I also think these competencies show that learning does not only happen in the classroom, but also continues as the student goes home and by things outside of the classroom.

In kindergarten, personal abilities, skills, interests, and motivations are learned through things like show and tell. I also learned these things at home by the things I liked to play with or do in my free time. Motivation was also learned at home by doing things like chores to get a new toy at the end of the week or by something as small as having ice cream. Even things such as who can run the fastest at recess can facilitate abilities, skills, interests, and motivations.

Later on in elementary and middle school, I learned a lot about respecting individual’s uniqueness in the classroom. I learned that everyone is different and has different opinions and they still need to be respected whether in the classroom, at an extracurricular activity, or even at work. This also allowed me to handle conflict when arguments did occur during discussions. I also learned to work on a team when teachers would place us into groups for either discussion or for a group project. This also helped with organization skills and communication skills, because I was not always in a group with my best friends. Being in extracurricular activities and attending school allowed me to learn the importance of responsibly, dependability, punctuality, and time-management.

By the time I was in high school, it was more clear cut that all the things I was learning was geared toward career development, college readiness, and the workforce. We were required to take a senior class on career development where we would learn to write a resume amongst many other things. A part of our senior project was also to research an intended career and interview someone in the field. One of the things I found most valuable was allowing us to take college classes for credits our senior year at the local community college. It allowed me to get my feet wet and know what a college course is like on top of going to college with credits already.

Many things are done throughout our K-12 experience geared toward career development. Back then it did not seem like it, but as I approached high school and by doing this discussion post I realized that.

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed., p. 14). Boston: Pearson.

Musings on what I've learned this far (Week 12 Blog post)

It is hard to believe that we have reached this point in the semester. ..Week 12! Only a few weeks left until finals and also the end of the semester. In reflecting over the last week or so on this experience of having an online course, I thought it most appropriate to incorporate some of the things that I have learned this far in the course and also how I have grown as a result of this experience. 

One thing that I have learned as a result of this course is an appreciate for career theory. Though, I feel that I don't know it quite as well as I would had I been taught in person something must have stuck because I was in class earlier this evening listening to a potential new faculty guest lecture in my cognitive therapy course and as she was giving us an example of two made up clients, I began to think about some of the things she was saying and relating it to career counseling. So that was kind of cool that my mind went there. 

This course has definitely been challenging in terms of all of the required assignments and deadlines. While at times some of the assignments can seem like "busy work" I know that deep down it was helping me to apply the material and inadvertently  it also taught me better time management skills. I was able to prioritize what exactly I had to do each week in order to get everything done and meet the deadline on Wednesday each week in order to give my peers adequate time to write their responses and replies.

Another important thing that this course has taught me is to embrace ambiguity. Often times clients aren't going to have their career narratives fit into nice tidy boxes with a theory being able to describe them perfectly. Theories aren't perfect but it is recognizing the strengths of each person and understanding not only their interests, but also their talents and what unique things they can bring to any position.

Often times clients will come to us when their is a problem, and while it may seem like why is he/she coming to me about this now .. it is important to recognize that we as future clinicians, school psychologists and school counselors hold a lot of power. These clients will be coming to us because we will be perceived as being competent and able to help them in their times of difficulty. 

Overall, this has been an interesting experience in terms of having this online/ blended course. It wasn't what I expected going into it but I know it will definitely help me in my future career as a clinical and also help me obtain my license. I look forward to the coming weeks and seeing everyone's workshops! :)

Reflections on Peer Postings and Wiki Evaluations

This week, I would like to discuss my experience of this class so far. I feel my experience is somewhat unique, as I am not part of the Masters program at Millersville, nor even a matriculated student. At times, I have felt that it has been more difficult for me to “break the ice” with my peers and work with them during discussion assignments and other work. If we were in a class that met regularly (even if only a few times during the semester), as was the case with a class I took over the summer at another institution, I think that my personality and knowledge of psychology would have shown and other students may have felt more comfortable interacting with me. As that has not happened, I find myself wondering if that is why I have only ever gotten a couple of peer responses to my discussion postings this whole semester. I have seen that other students have received lots of replies and an educational discussion often ensues. It is difficult to make that happen when 1) no one responds to my posts and 2) rarely does anyone respond when I reply to their posts. It is very easy to be seen as an outsider who is not invested in this class in any way, and students who see me that way may feel very cautious about their grades or the work they do or may not feel comfortable interacting with me because they don’t know how much I know or if I’m a good student, etc. Those are my assumptions, anyway.

As far as doing these evaluations, I have found it very interesting that there have been so many different opinions about each other’s reviews. Even though we were all given the same article to read (Granello) which has clear guidelines about where a written work would fall on the cognitive complexity scale, none of us seems to have the same perspective on the work we have reviewed. I wonder if this is because many of us come from different undergraduate programs and have all learned writing skills separately from this class. I also wonder if having a class in-person where we discussed Granello’s article in-depth could have been useful so that we could all have made sure we understood how to evaluation  a literature review. Moreover, I have found that I disagree with some of the comments that were made about my group’s lit review. I feel as if some of the comments have been unfounded and others provided an example of how even having the same class, and the same APA guidelines, people can interpret things differently. Where I felt we were paraphrasing research findings and providing appropriate citations, some felt we were making generalizations without research to back them up and others thought we needed to use less citations. It all seems to be very inconsistent across the board. Ultimately, once we find out the next steps, each group will have to decide for themselves what feedback was of value and what can be disregarded and move on from there.

Literature Review Week

The literature review process was a difficult one. There are so many articles out there and going through so many to find pieces that worked with the pieces was difficult. Also, since it was an online development, I found it difficult to communicate to work on the piece as a team. Since we split up the paper it was hard to blend our writing styles together. Overall, the paper really helped us setup the activities we are going to have during our week of the mock-career week.

Reading everyone’s literature reviews helped me see examples of great areas that I could improve parts of my own paper. I have not written many literature reviews in the past, however, this one was a great start. I am looking forward to going back through my paper to fix parts and adding more of the analysis piece.

Our paper made me think back to middle school and career development. While I was in middle school, we did one small survey that gave us three options to potential career. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, however, the three options I received from the online survey was a farmer, a botanist, or an accountant. I thought these areas were completely ludicrous and did not think anything of them. I was fortunate enough to know from a young age what I wanted to be, however, for students who were unsure this survey either pointed them in the wrong direction, or made them more confused.

To look at the studies and information we have gained since then, it is great to see programs and interventions that will help students explore and understand career information in order for each student to individually start exploring careers that are specific to them.

Athletes & Papers

Athletics and papers are two nouns, put politely, have never been my “my cup of tea.” In regards to athletics, well besides my terrific sideline cheerleading skills, eye-hand coordination and ball skills were not included in my genetic makeup.  And as for, papers, I am the first to admit that research, evaluation and grammar have been enlightening for me. The dreaded paper process has always been a slow and challenging one. Therefore, this literature review on the career development process of student athletes was for me, in simple terms, challenging. Nevertheless, after reading Granello (2001) and editing other student’s literature reviews, I came to the realization that I and my other fellow SCCN: 645 peers are not alone in this graduate school “paper writing agony.”

Granello was right, my undergraduate and previous training had taken place in the three typical areas: “conducting a library search, learning to read and understand research and the writing in APA” (Granello, 2001, p. 292). In other words, I have taken many classes and attended conferences in the library on how to properly search for relevant peer-reviewed articles in PsychInfo’s database. I took a course on research methods, in which I learned “how to read, summarize and understand research,” (Granello, 2001, p. 292).  My professor, Dr. Blincoe, was the best of the best and somehow managed for APA format, proper in-text citations, and the specific writing style to become encrypted in my brain. Dr. Blincoe trained us that if we were ever in question to “check The APA manual, for it was always right.” The APA Manual back then and still is today, my best friend. 

After reviewing my classmates’ literature reviews, I came to the realization of one thing; it is not that we as, graduate students, do not want to adequately synthesis, evaluate, and deliver cognitively advanced literature reviews; it is that we do not how. But as Granello (2001) put correctly, the APA Manual just outlines the specifics and minor details of writing and format.  The manual never adequately trained me or provided me with ways on how to improve my complexity of writing. However, I believe our education system and professor’s expectations are off the hook on this one. I blame our best friend and the creators of The American Psychological Manual.

Literature reviews are not easy.  They require, as Bloom’s Taxonomy outlined, a comprehensive, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation of research (Granello, 2001, p. 292).  We as graduate students need some help in the lengthy progression to the evaluation stage. Unfortunately Dr. Blincoe, we have checked the APA (multiple times), and the answer is not there. Maybe Bloom can help? 

Granello, D., H. (2001). Promoting cognitive complexity in graduate student written work: Using

Bloom’s Taxonomy as a pedagogical tool to improve literature reviews. Journal of Counselor Education and Supervision, 40, 292-307. 

Lit Review

     When initially starting the research for the literature review, I found that the research was relatively easy to come across. The topic I am working on is collegiate student-athletes. Although I suspected there would be more, there was a significant amount of information to utilize for my group's literature review. We were each able to find two or more articles that assisted us putting the review together. I think the difficulty with this aspect was finding that we each of our own writing styles and making it flow between articles was more difficult than we anticipating.

     Simply working on peer reviewing other groups literature reviews as helped me recognize where we need to improve on our own. I think we initially lost the direction we were going due to being so hyper-focused on the actually information itself. I believe that the information we found is useful and pertinent to our topic. I also believe that we have provided ourselves with a good basic understanding of what we are going into, but what we need to do is focus on how we are going to utilize the information and research we found to apply it to helping collegiate athletes find a career path. 

     We were able to start the review off with who student-athletes are and move on towards the difficulties student-athletes encounter upon graduation with no career plan ahead of them. A useful direction we should move towards now is the research that regards the interventions that must take place in undergraduate school, while they are still students, and how we can apply them in our workshop. I think the biggest issue student-athletes come into is when they graduate, they never focused on a career, but just the sport they are playing.

     I was a student-athlete, and although I was only playing Division II, I sort of fell into this mistake and path. I had to maintain a certain GPA and if I did not, I would have to attend the team study hall twice a week, but this is the extent of my career knowledge while in school. My grades were good, but I did not know what to do with them or my major (that I chose mostly on a whim). It did work out for me in that I took a risk by moving away from home and finding a job in my field and worked multiple jobs overs two years to gain experience that led me to make a decision to go to graduate school to become a counselor. But others are not as lucky and they fall back onto jobs that they did not like or enjoy. If I had more guidance, I may have gotten an internship or started graduate school earlier. I could have possibly gone a different route altogether.

     I hope from this project and creating this workshop, that it could potentially help other people as it has already helped me reflect. I understand, more than before, what direction this project needs to go and how to get there. Previously, I felt a little lost so I believe the peer reviews are helping. 

Blog week 11

                For the blog post this week I wanted to discuss my thoughts about the wiki. At this point in the class we have used this program substantially in different regards, both for the midterm as well as the literature review. While there are both positives and negatives to this software, I wanted to talk about my personal experience with using the wiki in both areas.

                First, I understand that this site looks like a great place to connect with other classmates considering this is an online course and that can be a daunting task when we do not meet face to face on a regular basis. With that said however, the wiki page used for the midterm was more of an overwhelming process than a helpful one. I found myself sifting through years and years of posts on theories and becoming defeated in trying to find information that I could include that had not been mentioned already. Then, once I felt that I found an area to be discussed on one page that was missing this information, spent a great deal of time adding what I felt was a strong contribution, three days later of sorting through the abundance of information, I found that it had been mentioned already embedded deeper within the wiki. It was a very time consuming and somewhat discouraging process, especially to engage in right before the midterm when time could have been more effectively used to prepare.

                Second, I have found that using the wiki for the literature review has been a better experience, although still not altogether a great one. Having a place to upload all of the articles my partner and I are using allows each of us to have a better understanding about the articles we are researching. This allows us both to critically evaluate all sources we are contributing and we are then able to decide which are most applicable to our topic. In this regard, the wiki was very helpful and a useful tool.

                For a group project that requires writing a document together in order for it to flow and be cohesive, I have found google docs to be the best tool. My partner and I still used this software in conjunction to the wiki in order to avoid constant uploads of paragraphs being added as we wrote and edited them together. This is especially true once we found that once posted, items cannot be deleted from the wiki.

                I also found the wiki had a significant amount of technical issues. For example, when trying to join my own wiki, my join code had expired even though it was a month before the due date of the project. Then, when trying to access another group’s wiki for the peer review process, access was restricted. I know that many peers faced this same issue as well. Being someone who has a very demanding schedule, spending days at a time on technical errors hindered progress on some of the assignments related to this class. 

Chapter 13

According to Brown (2012), career program activities can be put into place and be helpful if properly implemented. Brief interventions are defined as ones that take less time for the staff member per student as well as the number of hours consumed by the students. Even though they do not consume a lot of time, they have been found to have positive changes in students who were at first undecided. Some of these activities are web sites, advising, major fairs, career courses, and workshops and seminars.

One of the most helpful activities to me is implementing a major fairs. This is where students and faculty attend an evening program and they get to interact with different areas of study. This allows the students to see multiple careers at once. It also allows them to directly ask questions and get answers immediately regarding the major, if their interests match up with the major, and what they could do with the major. For students who are involved in other things, a major fairs will be extremely beneficial. This allows students to pursue all their options in one night which is less time consuming then making appointments with each major to get more information. Another group of students that this may particularly appeal to are those students who are lazy or less motivated. They are not going to take time out of their schedules to book an appointment with multiple majors to gain more information. This allows them to get it all done in one night. I also think this should be a requirement for those who are undecided to attend with their counselor. It can serve as a starting point for some who are clueless about what they want to major in and for others this could allow them to make their choice of major. Schools have tons of fairs including ones for jobs and internships, but I never heard of them doing a fair with all the majors (at least not at my undergraduate institution).

One of the things I found least helpful is having a career course. In high school I took one and the class was not interesting, especially since I already chose a major. The class was mandatory, but I think if schools are going to have these type of courses it should be for those who are undecided and not those who already know what they want to do in life. It could also be confusing if you have a career choice and cause career indecisiveness that you did not have prior to this class.

There are many ways to educate students on careers. Personally, the more hands on and creative approaches are more likely to gain students attention and allow them to fully engage in the activity which will hopefully allow them to pick a major. 

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed., p. 14). Boston: Pearson.