HSHSP Ep 179: Career Coaching with Homeschool High Schoolers, Interview with Jamie Beck

This week on HSHSP Ep 179: Career Coaching with Homeschool High Schoolers, Interview with Jamie Beck.

HSHSP Ep 179: Career Coaching with Homeschool High Schoolers, Interview with Jamie Beck

As many homeschool families know by now, 7Sister Vicki LOVES career exploration. She is joined today by Jamie Beck a homeschooling mom and career coach in California.

Jamie homeschools her 12 year old through a charter school in California. She also has an elementary-aged son in traditional school, which shows that there’s not ONE right way to homeschool…even if it is in a traditional school setting 😉

Jamie decided to homeschool and started teaching Career Education when her daughter was 2 and a half year old. She started by creating a children’s book, which did not do financially well. She felt it was a failure but she used the failure, not as defeat, but to give herself impetus to develop a Career Exploration program for young people. (See links at the end of the post.)

Jamie’s top piece of advice is to tweak how you teach your kids to talk about careers. Teach them to say:

“When I grow up I want to work with…” rather than “When I grow up I want to be a… ”
- Children are conditioned by society to think that career is identity. Jamie feels this limits their options and creative thinking about career. “Working with” keeps options and creativity open.

She wants young people to explore LOTS of careers: Aou can never have a career you don’t know exists.

She teaches 5 jobs a day from childhood. She does this informally, through conversation and exposure to different careers.

For Career Exploration Jamie recommends that homeschooling parents help their homeschool high schoolers to be:

Involved in interests, at home and in classes or interest groups
Explore different practical skills (hands-on and other life skills)
Learn networking skills (Download Vicki’s Confidence for Meeting New People Skills freebie)
Learn advocacy skills (how to ask for what you want or need)
Learn financial and business skills (oh my, don’t miss this! Download 7Sisters popular Financial Literacy course)
Teaching teaching experiences, give them experiences in training younger siblings, friends, classes (think preschool at church)
Join various groups. (Jamie’s daughter is active in drama and 4H)
Volunteer with various career interests
Shadow and interview people in various careers
Discuss why teens are interested in various careers. Ie, if it is an interest in being a doctor, as you explore you might find that they hate blood but they like to help people. Maybe other helping professions like counseling will help.
Build an experiential resume starting 8th or 9th grade. Keep it ongoing. Download 7Sisters How to Write an Experiential Resume and keep it going.
Have LOTS of experiences!!
- Experiences are truly one of the best ways to weed out or strengthen career interests. Jamie tells the story of her daughter wanting to be an archeologist until she spent the day with a group digging for sharks’ teeth. After a day of 101 degree heat, her daughter eliminated that career choice.

Jamie is now a career coach who speaks in libraries doing workshops in libraries. She also gives Brain Sorting Assessment, it helps them sort out their TRUE interests from what they randomly think their interests might be. The Brain Sort asks things like:

What’s on internet browser history
If they say they want to be an engineer, but they never explore STEM information. It makes you interested?
What are the various interests about the setting, skills, training of careers of interest
Where would you donate a million dollars?
What does that tells your teen?
What do you save up money for?
What do you buy?
What do you collect?
What are your habits?

Jamie says: Teens are going to be working and sleeping for 50 years, so they need an amazing mattress and an amazing job.

Vicki was so excited to talk to Jamie because of their shared love of Career Exploration. Jamie’s passion for helping teens understand themselves and truly explore best-fits is a hallmark of a true Career Coach.

As you know, 7SistersHomeschool.com has lots of articles on Career Exploration for homeschool highschoolers as well as our popular Career Exploration course.

Check out our comprehensive post on Career Exploration: An Authoritative Guide to Career Exploration.
AND you also know that we love to talk about Career Exploration right here on Homeschool Highschool Podcast. Check out these episodes:
One of our top series on Career Exploration includes: Career Exploration for Teens Who Don’t Have a Clue and Career Exploration for Teens Who Love Everything.
Also check out What’s Included in Career Exploration.
And our episode on the practical end of Career Exploration: Getting it on the transcript: Career Pathways for Homeschool High School.
Or our episode on How to Explore Psychology as a College Major.
And you’ll love our friend, Carol Topp (and fellow podcaster right here on the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network) and her 4-part series on Career Exploration.

To find Jamie, CareerVisionByJamie.com. Check out her resources and her Brain Sort. She helps match teens and colleges. She also hosts Career Vision Minute on Facebook.