[CALIBK12] HIT: Career-related controversial issues

[Daydream Queen]

Thanks to everyone who responded. I feel I have a better grip on this. I'm
looking forward to helping the kids out with this even though I can tell it
will be a challenge. It has the feel of a non-bird-unit research project to
me, especially when the kids get to tie in how they would handle the issue
personally on the job. I got lots of great responses on my post about
career-related controversial issues. Here are the responses thus far.

Original Question: Does anyone have any idea where I would find information
on controversial issues realted to careers? I have lot of Opposing
Viewpoints books and tons of career books but I don't see much overlap. I
imagine this will be a great challege for seniors but I'd like to provide
some ideas of how to approach this. A teacher has assigned this as a
research topic.

 Responses:

The first thing that occurs is professional vs. para or clerk

How many careers struggle with that?

also, school vs. career......with all the emphasis on college, does
vocational still pay?


This is a shot in the dark but would looking at Controversial Issues
websites and tying it into future careers, i.e., censorship and librarian or
abortion and doctor, be of any help.  I've sent the links I use with our
Econ and Government classes when they research controversy.

http://www.policyalmanac.org/

http://www.multcolib.org/homework/sochc.html

http://www.globalissues.org/



Seems like this would be one of those higher level thinking skills tasks
that will keep kids away from "bird reports".  Wouldn't you need to consider
jobs where people are faced with ethical or moral dilemmas.  How about
librarians and their responsibility for book selection vs censorship? Or
medical personnel being asked to perform controversial procedures, people in
industries where ethical treatment of animals is an issue, jobs in the
legal/judicial area, or dozens more.  A book like the Macmillan Compendium
of Social Issues could give you many more ideas.  Hard work, but I like it!



I tried the Opposing Viewpoints database with the search "jobs".  The
articles tended to be about outsourcing.  Then I tried googling an
occupation/field and the word controversy (e.g. teaching controversy) and
got many ideas that might work.



For example,

teaching, controversy = teaching safe sex/health ed, teaching evolution

trucking, controversy = Mexican trucks bringing goods into US

airlines, controversy = breast feeding on board, terrorism/profiling



Some are not "careers" directly, but they are still ideas of controversial
happening in an industry that may affect one's job situation.



Job discrimination?

Unions-- beneficial or not?

Dress codes at work?

Health benefits or not?

Merit Pay?



Most of these are generic, I think you need to begin with a more global,
generic approach.



Next, I would ask each  "special area" teacher in my school willing to help
me for a list of two or three issues specific to the field in which he
teaches. (Ag, Career Ed, Health, Music, Art, etc...)



General topics:  glass ceiling, life-work balance, affirmative action,
contract work vs. employee status, personal religious conscious issues (such
as for medical personnel in regard to abortion, withholding of nutrition),
gays in the military, role of women in the military, dating co-workers,
sexual harassment in the workplace, workplace dresscodes, good/bad aspects
of unions & issues with big non-union employees, need for lots of immigrants
to take the nasty jobs "Americans" don't want, outsourcing of work to other
countries, new generation regularly changing both jobs and careers often
(much more than we middle aged folks did or at least expected to do)

I don't have any idea about where to find the information but some suggested
topics might be Geologists working for oil companies, Nuclear
scientist, product testing by research scientist, ecological impact of the
fishing industry. The automotive industry ie Hybred cars, electric cars.
The ethics of import/export businesses.  Sounds like an interesting report
project.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Daydream Queen <daydream.queen at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 10:14 AM
Subject: Career-related controversial issues
To: CALIBk12 <calibk12 at listproc.sjsu.edu>


Does anyone have any idea where I would find information on controversial
issues realted to careers? I have lot of Opposing Viewpoints books and tons
of career books but I don't see much overlap. I imagine this will be a great
challege for seniors but I'd like to provide some ideas of how to approach
this. A teacher has assigned this as a research topic.

-- 
Sarah Bosler, Teacher Librarian
Montclair High School
Chaffey Joint Union High School District
http://mohigh.com

"Well-behaved women rarely make history" - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich



-- 
Sarah Bosler, Teacher Librarian
Montclair High School
Chaffey Joint Union High School District
http://mohigh.com

"Well-behaved women rarely make history" - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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