ANCPAG Seminars
ANCPAG is a developmental career orientation program designed for junior and senior high school learners and their parents. It is our belief that students and parents who are oriented on key aspects of higher education and careers can make more sensible decisions. ANCPAG stands for Adaptation, Navigation, Choices, Paths, Assessment, and Goals—seminar modules intended for each level in junior and senior high school. Details about each module are presented below:
Adaptation (for Grade 12)
Adaptation is designed for learners in Grade 12. They are oriented on various colleges and universities where they may pursue higher education. The seminar begins with a little history to cite that education is rooted deeply in the Philippine culture. Also, the seminar tackles the importance of recognizing quality education as offered by higher education institutions. The seminar recaps the academic preparations that the learners have gone through in junior and senior high school and proceeds to a discussion of the ABC of evaluating colleges and universities—Accreditation, Board Exam Performance, and CHEd Citations (Center of Excellence and Center of Development). This is a statistical evaluation of the performances of colleges and universities in various college programs that the Grade 12 learners want to pursue.
Seminar Duration: 90 minutes
Navigation (for Grade 11)
The Navigation seminar, intended for Grade 11 learners, addresses various reasons some learners struggle with career decision-making and how these decisions can affect their future especially at a crucial period when they have to carefully chart their career paths. Fuller discussions about career crossroads are taken up as the learners go through various levels of education. While in Grade 11, what can learners do in case they want to shift career tracks or strands? What if the learners decide on a college program that is not aligned to the career track or strand they are in? What are the options of learners who fail to be admitted to the only Philippine university that offers the college program they want to major in? In college, what are the learners’ options if they decide to change majors? After college, what can they do if they want to major in another discipline? Issues concerning multiple interests are also addressed.
Seminar Duration: 90 minutes
Choices (for Grade 10)
The Choices seminar is aimed at preparing the Grade 10 learners for senior high school. The seminar will help them choose the ideal career tracks and strands in pursuit of certain careers. Choices will discuss the Academic, Technical-Vocational, Arts & Design, and Sports tracks. It will also present the strands and specializations under these career tracks, what subjects will be taken up, and how these subjects are distributed into four semesters of senior high school. Further, the Choices seminar orients Grade 10 learners on some of the salient features of senior high school and the rationale of going through the core, applied, and specialized subjects in senior high.
Seminar Duration: 90 minutes
Paths
Designed for Grade 9 learners, Paths discusses factors that affect decision making on careers, such as parents, guardians, friends, financial capacity, intellectual aptitude, emotional intelligence, prejudice about the basic career tracks, and wrong information about some college programs. The seminar will include discussions about career routing after junior and senior high school, and learners are familiarized with various career paths. College programs are also classified and presented emphasizing the following essential items of information:
- key areas of study
- skills and character learners should possess in studying the program
- an overview of the training program they will undergo in college
- misconceptions about the program,
- career paths
Seminar Duration: 90 minutes
Assessment
The Assessment seminar, designed for Grade 8 learners, encourages the learners to increase self-awareness as knowledge of one’s self is important in recognizing career options. The attendees undergo a simple self-evaluation consistency test to determine if they are possible “career buddies” and if they have a good idea of who they are. This test can help establish how well a person knows oneself and how it can be a precursor to their career choices. Learners are also given pointers on how to do peer-to-peer career coaching to address situations in deciding on careers such as settling for college programs friends have decided to pursue. They are also taught to recognize interest signals to help them decide on certain careers. Various intelligences are tackled to point out reasons they are going through and will go through certain subjects in junior and senior high school.
Seminar Duration: 90 minutes
Goals
Conceived for the Grade 7 learners, Goals relates the objective of junior high school as a preparatory program for senior high school, higher education, and eventually, careers. The seminar discusses how academic performance starting from Grade 7 can affect the learner’s admission into the prestigious colleges and universities as well as their career choices. Also, the seminar tackles projections on college expenses and how the Grade 7 learners can be of assistance to their parents in handling the financial requirements of higher education. Further, the seminar discusses the physical, emotional, and social requirements of pursuing certain occupational disciplines and how these requirements can affect the learners’ career choices.
Seminar Duration: 90 minutes
The Career Clinic
Aside from the CPAG Seminars, GuidanceNGO also holds career clinics in high schools. What is a career clinic? It is an intimate consultation about careers conducted by resource persons from the academe and practitioners from various industries.
A career clinic is an alternative to a college orientation program. While a college orientation program serves to promote schools, a career clinic promotes academic programs.
The weakness of college orientation programs can be seen when college representatives employ sophisticated (sometimes tricky) marketing gimmicks to entice students to enrol in their schools. Further, it has been observed that many marketing representatives are not adequately knowledgeable about the college programs their schools offer. Here are a couple of situations observed in college orientation programs in two secondary schools in Metro Manila:
Situation 1. This happened in a Caloocan high school.
College Representative speaking in front of high school students: “Sino sa inyo ang mahilig sa recess?”
As expected, many students raised their hands.
Then, the college representative said: “Okay yung mahilig sa recess, you can take culinary arts! Our school …”
Situation 2. This was observed in a school in Quezon City.
College representative: “Who among you are excellent in math?”
A few students raised their hands. Then, the college representative said: “Those who are excellent in math should pursue accountancy. Our school offers …”
These situations show that many college representatives are not adequately informed aboutsome college programs. One should not pursue culinary arts just because he or she likes recess periods, and one does not have to be a math wizard to pursue accountancy.
With the career clinic, students are not misinformed about careers. Also, students need not waste time listening to college representatives whose schools do not offer the college programs they want to pursue.
With the career clinic, guidance counselors provide GuidanceNGO a list of college programs that their students are interested in. GuidanceNGO coordinates with the colleges, universities, and industries to send career consultants who will discuss the college programs in the provided list. Note that GuidanceNGO will invite career consultants only from schools that excel in the college programs the students want to know more about.
Classrooms of the 3rd and the 4th year high school students are converted into “clinics.” Each career consultant is assigned a career clinic. Students choose the clinics where the programs they are interested in will be discussed. Simultaneously, the career clinics hold consultation sessions.
Only a small number of students (around 20) can be accommodated by each “clinic.” If there are more students wanting to attend the clinic, the career consultant re-runs the career consultation session to accommodate another batch of students.
Career consultation sessions can be re-run several times. If the career clinic activity requires 4 re-runs of career consultation sessions lasting 45 minutes each, the career clinic activity should be finished in 3 hours.
In a 3-hour career clinic activity, each student should have attended 4 career clinics. This addresses the common predicament of students who have not finally decided on one college program to pursue, but are still entertaining several options.
Some college programs may be thinly subscribed to; meaning, only a few students are interested in these programs. These college programs may not need separate career clinics. Instead, these programs can be discussed in the Paths Seminar.
Those who are interested to avail of this Seminar can get in touch with Mr. Fromark Bacomo at (02) 43.43.215 or (02) 436.94.58, or e-mail us at guidancengo@gmail.com.