Curriculum Review of YES! (Youth Exploration Survey): An Extreme Journey

Career Direct’s YES!® Curriculum is a travel-themed career exploration program designed to help youth age 13-16 discover their own desires and abilities and to use that information to help direct them toward a future career.  Materials include a Leaders’ Guide, a Parents’ Guide, a Student workbook, and a “Passport” which students use to record their findings as they work through the program.    There are several ways that the curriculum can be presented.  Students can work through it individually or in small groups.  It can be administered at home, at school, in a youth group, as a youth seminar, etc.  The Leader’s Guide provides suggestions on how to structure each of these types of presentations.  No matter what presentation you choose, the total amount of time required for students to complete the material is about 6-8 hours.

The survey material is broken down into three sections and 9 chapters.  Section 1, the first two chapters, is an introduction to the program.  Chapter 1 is a summary of the program and also includes a presentation of biblical principles backed by a list of scripture verses. Chapter two introduces the students to the passport booklet and explains its purpose.

Section 2 of the program helps the students to discover more about themselves through several questionnaires.  In chapter 3, students learn about their personality traits.  In chapter 4, they discover their personal interests.  Chapter 5 focuses on their abilities and chapter 6 on the job traits that are important to them.  The questionnaires are simple and straightforward and yet interesting and helpful.  After completing this section, the students will be able to answer the following sorts of questions:

·       What kind of personality do I have?  Am I an adventurer, a commander, a creator, an encourager, an entertainer, or an organizer?

·       Am I interested in helping people or animals, expressing my ideas, influencing others, analyzing situations, or doing things?

·       What are my top six work abilities?

·       Why should I choose a job which utilizes my abilities?

·       What qualities am I looking for in a job (flexible hours, independence, task variation)?  Which qualities are most important to me?

The program materials also help students to identify strengths and weaknesses of various personality types.  They list career groups that correspond to different interest areas and personality types.  Throughout the program, students reflect on their in-school and out-of-school activities to determine which require them to use their abilities and which stretch them because of their weaknesses.

In section 3 of the Career Direct YES!® Program, the students apply the information they have discovered about themselves in section 2.  They research career possibilities that they are interested in, then follow a step-by-step process that helps them to evaluate whether these careers actually match well with their abilities and the job qualities that they have selected.  Chapters 8 and 9 are optional parts of the program.  In chapter 8, students write a “Life Purpose Statement.”  Chapter 9 provides a rather extensive list of career possibilities in each of the five interest areas described in chapter 4.  This list can be a very helpful guide for students as they may not know about the tremendous variety of career possibilities open to them.