High School Program
JA Careers with a Purpose™
Through hands-on classroom activities and local, regional, and global essay competitions, JA Careers with a Purpose™ introduces students to the importance of seeking careers that help them realize their life potential and noble purpose. The program demonstrates the importance of positive values, life maxims, and ethical decision-making within the context of career and life decisions.
Following participation in the program, students will be able to:
- Use ethical decision-making skills to make career and life decisions.
- Describe possible career choices in terms of their individual noble purpose.
Session Titles and Summaries
Session One: A Sense of Purpose
Students explore the various roles they will play in their lives and how their own skills, interests, and values will help define those roles.
Session Two: What Do You Value?
Students discuss values and the ways in which they prefer to work. They explore scenarios in which their values are tested and work decisions are made, and then examine how they arrive at their decisions.
Session Three: What’s in a Name? Jobs vs. Careers
Students explore the differences between a job and a career and learn how they can apply their skills, interests, and values to a career with a noble purpose.
Session Four: The World of Work
Students explore the world of work and see how their skills, interests, and values align with various career clusters, pathways, and careers.
Session Five: Your Decisions
Students make decisions as if they were employed in a real-world, high-growth, high-demand industry.
Session Six: Your Code of Conduct
Students discuss ethics in the workplace and understand how personal ethics and business ethics can intersect.
Session Seven: Take Action
Students use a decision-making process to consider post high school career options.
Additional program components:
- Students participate in JA Worldwide’s Laws of Life Essay Contest.
- Students are strongly encouraged to complete JA’s online career assessments.
JA Worldwide® gratefully acknowledges the John Templeton Foundation and the HCA Foundation, Inc., for their dedication to the development and implementation of the high school program JA Careers with a Purpose. JA Worldwide appreciates its partnerships with the John Templeton Foundation and the HCA Foundation, Inc., to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy.
For additional information on this and all Junior Achievement programs, please visit www.ja.org