Episode 34: Writing a Research Paper? Try Career Research

Many students are overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable task of writing a research paper and emerging writers often shut down because there’s just too much to think about. As secondary teachers with nearly 40 students in each class, we, too, were overwhelmed. Creating a project that would ensure students practiced the skills they needed, but wouldn’t leave us buried under a mountain of grading frequently left us wishing this genre of writing would just disappear!

When we decided to buckle down and create an assignment that would cover the skills we needed to address, but also allow our students to learn some practical information that would be helpful in their real lives, we landed on career research. This project would give them an opportunity to practice and develop proficiency in the research skills we chose to focus on, while also giving them the element of autonomy we’ve often come to equate with the yearly research paper project.

In this episode, we discuss a career research website we used as a foundational, required resource for our career research activity. Here’s the link to the CareerOneStop website for you!