Application: Exploring Career Opportunities in the Early Childhood Field

You are exploring positions in the early childhood field and using job titles, job descriptions, and information on job prospects to expand your awareness of career opportunities. This Application will increase your knowledge about specific jobs in the field and offer firsthand experience with online resources for locating available positions. As you have learned, some jobs require advanced degrees or experience. To assist you in thinking about a career ladder, you will be exploring positions that require an undergraduate degree and those that take additional training or education.

The Application is divided into two parts.

For Part 1, you will visit the following job-posting Web sites: the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) Early Childhood Career Forum and the Employment Opportunities page on the Child Care Exchange site. You will identify potential jobs from among the actual positions advertised on the sites to complete the Positions in the Early Childhood Field Career Exploration Sheet and will post the completed sheet in the Doc Sharing area of your classroom.

For Part 2 of the Application, you will respond to reflection questions based on your research and submit these, along with your completed Career Exploration Sheet.

To complete this Application, do the following:

Part 1: Identifying and Sharing Positions in the Early Childhood Field

Prepare-

Positions in the Early Childhood Field Career Exploration Sheet

Review the sheet in order to identify the necessary information.

Research-

Use one or both of the following sites to explore career opportunities.

-NAEYC Early Childhood Career Forum

-Child Care Exchange: Employment Opportunities

Your goal is to select three positions of interest to you that meet the following criteria:

A position you would qualify for with your Bachelor of Science degree in Child Development

A position that requires a graduate-level degree to qualify

A position that requires an advanced degree and/or significant years of experience and represents a career goal you would aspire to reach

After reviewing the Web sites, you may choose positions from one or both sites to complete the sheet. Make your selections based on the positions that interest you most.

Share

Save your completed Positions in the Early Childhood Field Career Exploration Sheet assignment as last name+your first initial.

Then post a copy of the assignment in the Doc Sharing area of your classroom.

Note: Once you have completed your assignment, proceed to the Discussion board to complete this week's initial posting based on your review of the sheets completed by your colleagues.

Part 2: Reflect on Your Research and Career Options

When you have completed the exploration sheet, respond to the following items:

Based on all of the positions you reviewed for this Application, describe how this experience has influenced your previous ideas or assumptions, and/or helped you gain new insights into career opportunities in the early childhood field.

For the three positions you selected, explain your ideas about how you can focus your education and professional growth-in this program and/or after you graduate-to prepare yourself to qualify for at least one of the positions in the future.