- Heath
- Review a job description through a job website (e.g., Career Builder (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.), Monster (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.), etc.) in your desired career field. Please provide the job title and the link to the job description.
- Physical Education Teacher
- https://www.monster.com/jobs/search/?q=gym-teacher-&where=alaska&jobid=dbbd05ec-be54-4313-8fe7-7b596bf21a85 (Links to an external site.)
- Identify at least five skills you have obtained through your general education courses that will make you successful at this job.
- I have gained a wide variety of communication skills
- Having general education classes have given me the skills to be organized
- Many of the classes have helped me to improve my focus and to stay on task
- Interpersonal skill have been learned with the many discussion that I have had
- Patience and being able to adapt when things do not go my way
- Demonstrate with at least two examples how your newly acquired knowledge and skills have shaped both your personal and professional development.
- Being in the military all the skills listed above are used every day. Since I just moved to my new base a few months ago, I have had the pleasure to get to know a whole new shop and learn about the new troops that I have. Being able to communicate with each of them has been a huge part of my day-to-day. In addition to that being able to adapt to the new environment of work has been a big part of my life. I am now working with Guards, and I have little to almost no experience with them as a group. It is nice to learn about their style of work and the many different rules that come in to play.
- Describe your plans for putting your education to use within your community.
- I hope to one day become a teacher. The military has a program called Troops to Teachers. I hope to be able to shape the minds of the next generation of young people into being the future leaders. I think that with my many years of service and love of sports I will make a great physical education teacher when it is time for me to leave the military life.
- Kevin
- As a current armed Uber consultant and aspiring Crisis Management Officer for the state of Missouri, various general education courses have prepared me to deal with the dynamic, multifaceted aspects of both professions. Ideally, I will rise within the crisis management profession and become a Senior Crisis Manager or even the founder and operator of a non-profit crisis management organization. Regardless, I find that there is tremendous value to possessing a broad base of knowledge. As such, I am always eager to acquire knowledge and skills and believe that doing so can be beneficial in at times surprising ways.
- General education curriculum refers to “the series of courses that all undergraduate students must complete regardless of their major or concentration” (Henschel, Lewis, Wade, & Schwertner, 2018, p. 84). I have taken various general education courses that have been beneficial. Along these lines, in my English and History courses, I have come across material that helps me to better understand people. As a core competency, I am adept at recognizing how others are feeling and helping to diffuse any current or potential crisis. Learning about different time periods, societies, and cultures has given me a broader understanding of people from backgrounds dissimilar from my own. Moreover, I have learned that there are shared traits and commonalities between all peoples everywhere and over time.
- My success as a Crisis Management Officer for the state of Missouri will depend on my ability to empathize with others. I will need to have situational awareness and to be adept at connecting with others in a way that can turn tricky situations into those that are extremely manageable. These two factors are key to my professional development. Success in both my current and desired future job can be more easily obtained through certain skills—recognizing and analyzing situations, connecting with others, communicating well with them, diffusing crises, and facilitating stability even in tough conditions—which I have been fortunate to develop in part through general education courses. Ultimately, I believe that everyone should take general education courses, including those that are well outside of their intended major, as doing so can help to create a broad base of knowledge and important skills that may come in handy even in unanticipated ways.
- References
Henschel, S., Lewis, M., Wade, K. C., & Schwertner, D. (2018). Trends in undergraduate general education in the US, the Texas Core Curriculum, and communication course requirements. Texas Education Review 6(1), 84-101.