10th Grade — Career Deep-Dive: Matching Yourself to a Path

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Pick one career from the hub without reading its requirements yet. Guess: what do you think it actually pays entry-level?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How does my actual work right now compare to what a real entry-level design job expects?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Choose one career from the Careers in Design hub and study its requirements, income data, and listed projects.
Compare their own current portfolio to that career's entry-level expectations.
Name 2 specific skills to build before 11th grade ends to close any gap.

🧰 What You'll Need

Careers in Design hub (site/careers.html)
Own work from this year

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Research

Independent research (35 min): read one full career page -- requirements, income table, and portfolio projects.

Day 2: Compare & Plan

Independent work (35 min): compare your own portfolio to the career's expectations and name 2 specific skills to build before 11th grade ends.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

Day 1

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

Day 2

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Entry-Level Requirements: What a job realistically expects from someone with little to no professional experience yet.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Research and comparison checked for specific, accurate use of the real career page, not guesses.

Exit Ticket: Were you closer or further from that career's entry requirements than you expected?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📤 How You Submit This — For Credit

How you submit today's work depends on what kind of work it was. Physical/paper work (most of this semester so far): photograph it with a classroom camera, upload the photo from its SD card onto a computer, and save it into your portfolio -- that upload is your submission, and the physical piece itself is yours to keep, the same as in Grade 9 (your notebook is the one thing with a home base in the room, and even that's your call to bring home when you want it). Digital work (once you're producing files in Photoshop, second semester on): no camera needed -- instead, EXPORT the file. Export your finished project as a JPG, as a PNG, AND save a copy as a PSD (all three), then upload all three into your portfolio. Either way: the portfolio upload, with a description, is what actually counts as turning the assignment in for credit.

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week, add your best finished or in-progress piece to your portfolio (the Google Drive folder you started in Grade 9, becoming your Google Sites portfolio in Lesson 10) with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what tool/skill it used, and one thing you learned. Keep it current -- don't save it all for the portfolio-website lesson.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Career Deep-Dive: Matching Yourself to a Path.” This project asked: “How does my actual work right now compare to what a real entry-level design job expects?” I used Entry-Level Requirements by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry

🔗 Want to Learn More?

No extra links for this lesson.

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same career-research method a Business or Advisory class career unit assigns.

Career Connection: This is direct, hands-on use of the Careers hub itself.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Build a visual "gap chart" comparing your current skills to that career's stated requirements. Start here: copy the career's actual listed requirements straight from its Careers hub page into a two-column list before designing any chart, so every item traces back to real text.
Find or request one piece of real advice from someone working in that career and add it to your research. Start here: check if anyone in your family, school, or community actually works in or near that field before reaching out cold — a real connection gets a faster, more specific answer.