In South Sioux City, Nebraska, you’ll find a normal Midwestern town — a large discount superstore, a few grocery stores, residential areas, health care facilities, and good schools. What sets South Sioux City apart from other towns of similar size are the unique collaborative efforts that the school and community have established in order to provide their students with a successful future.

Building Nebraska Career Connections
Kuder, Inc. introduced Nebraska Career Connections at www.nebraskacareerconnections.org across the state in September of 2006. This was the first of its kind — an Internet-based one-stop shop of statewide education and career planning resources. While other states had implemented Kuder Career Planning Systems into their school systems, the Nebraska system represented a true custom development and collaborative effort between Kuder, Inc. and state agencies and organizations, while giving students, educators, and parents a new tool to be used for planning successful futures.

Nebraska Career Connections is designed around the Kuder system platform with three research-based assessments on interests, skills, and work values. It incorporates college and career searches; provides resumé building and job interviewing resources; and gives users a lifelong career portfolio of their results all online. Nebraska Career Connections is also a graphically-advanced, Internet-based system with interactive tools that make it user-friendly for all. In addition, state resources such as the Nebraska Career Education Model and state-specific components such as the Personal Learning Plan feature and the Career and Life Skills Assessment were integrated into the system creating a forward-thinking educational and career planning system that meets state standards and user expectations.

South Sioux City High School (SSCHS) was one of the first schools in the state to jump onboard with Nebraska Career Connections. Former assistant Principal Justin Wagner (now the Principal at Harlan Community High School in Iowa) envisioned a system for his school where classes, educational resources, and state standards could all be utilized at once. Starting months prior to the release of the system, Wagner formed committees and teams to help get the idea of Nebraska Career Connections rolling in the community: “We have a START team (Student-Teacher-Academic-Relationship-Time) of seven people who researched Nebraska Career Connections, visited schools, brainstormed ideas, and processed feedback regarding the implementation of the system,” Wagner said. “The group put lesson plans together and then gave them to teachers. When we [the community] have a full understanding of Nebraska Career Connections, how it benefits students and how it helps educators, that's when you get full implementation.”

One of the main reasons for incorporating Nebraska Career Connections into the SSCHS curriculum was the monitoring and reporting feature that the system has for administrators. SSCHS keeps records of its students and their activities through high school as well as after graduation through the district’s Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) system. “Combining the PLP with Nebraska Career Connections was a logical choice since the PLPs can be built right into the online system giving them a centralized location for all career and educational information,” Wagner stated. “By doing so, SSCHS can keep better records on their students (while in high school and beyond) as they can tie the PLP information with other resources of Nebraska Career Connections.”

Jumping Some Hurdles
Among the logistical hurdles Wagner and his staff faced was a bi-lingual (primarily Spanish speaking), culturally-diverse school. While this is no longer a rarity for small, industrial towns in Nebraska, the school faced challenges in knowing how to communicate and implement Nebraska Career Connections to this multicultural audience. They also faced the challenge of making sure that all these families had access to a computer with an Internet connection. However, these challenges did not stop the staff at SSCHS from ensuring that all students and parents would be able to gain access to the system in one way or another.

A grant was written by SSCHS to the Nebraska Department of Education/Perkins Fund to furnish computers at Siouxland Estates mobile home community. Additional computer kiosks were also put up at the Hy-Vee grocery store, Watchful Eye Foundation (a local awareness center for children’s safety), and public library. This access to computers across the community made a significant difference in the number of kids participating in the use of the system, in creating parental awareness of this resource, and in having community involvement to make Nebraska Career Connections a success.

“Putting the computers at Siouxland Estates has been widely successful, the kids are constantly using them,” Wagner said. “Hy-Vee has an average amount of users, but Siouxland Estates is full every night, and the kids using the system are those that would normally get into trouble. Because computer-based opportunities have been provided, a whole new world of possibilities has opened up for them.”

As the school year progressed, more and more students became familiar with Nebraska Career Connections. But as Wagner put it, many of them haven’t taken full ownership of the system yet. But, during the new 2007-08 school year, he expects more and more will get onboard.

Student & Parent Voices
Angie Overton, Kuder’s Vice President of Customer Relations, led a student focus group for English-speaking students, and Dr. Catalina D’Achiardi, Kuder’s Vice President of Research led focus groups for Spanish-speaking students and parents at SSCHS, in order to understand the extent of their usage and perception of the system. The student groups included freshmen through seniors, and the parent groups included guardians for those same grade levels.

The comments provided by both groups were very illuminating. “It gave us the [assessment] results right away,” Evan, a senior, said. “And after the results, it gave us an idea as to what we’d be good at doing in that area. It seems like the interpretation was good.”

Others said they liked specific components of the system, such as Person Match, the college exploration area, saving their favorites to their online portfolios, and the financial aid section. “If I would have known about this as a freshman, I would have used it a lot,” Shelly, a senior, said. “Even now, it’s still useful for the scholarship searches and other things.”

Although parents were not as familiar as the students were with the different components of the system, they expressed how much they appreciated the efforts from the school to make the computers available to the kids in their own community. Moreover, they also expressed appreciation for the school’s effort to set up a parent-student meeting where students could share their assessment results with them.

However, as freshman through seniors picked up on the objectives and goals of Nebraska Career Connections, so did parents and other community members. All of the students said that when information comes from the school, parents are likely to pay attention. Wagner agrees. “Every parent wants a bright future for their child,” Wagner said. “Sometimes, they don’t know how to do this or don’t have the resources to help their kids. We hope this [Nebraska Career Connections] embodies that process and brings families together to learn. It is a goal to increase those conversations about high school early on – not just as a senior – and encourage the postsecondary experience.”

When the focus group was formed for parents of Hispanic and Latino/a students, the response was overwhelming. From Nebraska Career Connections startup to community kiosk implementation to sharing results with students, parents were willing to learn the system themselves in order to relate to their child and help them succeed.

And succeed they will. With support from SSCHS staff and educators, parents, and community members, students of all races, languages, and backgrounds now have the opportunity to get on track toward a successful future with Nebraska Career Connections.

Wagner expects the learning process to be on-going as new staff members are introduced. “Nebraska Career Connections is seamless, and has a bright, sustainable future,” Wagner said. “Anyone who gets the chance to walk through the system would become a believer.”

Return to the Kuder User News Main Menu