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Cadette STEM Career Exploration - GSOC Inspire

Complete the following steps to earn the Cadette STEM Career Exploration Badge:

Materials Required: blank index cards or cut white cardstock, crayons/markers, pencils

1. What She Does: Watch the Cadette Planet, World, or Story video on the GSOC Inspire site. Ask your Girl Scouts what careers they are interested in learning about to help make your choice on what path to take.  

Optional: You are more than welcome to watch more than one!

2. Learn About a STEM Career: Watch at least 2-3 videos about specific career women. Choose two women to explore in depth from your video, or check out the Career Women Library. 

3. STEM Careers Activity: Window to Your Future

• To do this activity, you will need blank index cards (no lines), or cut cardstock, pencils and crayons/markers for additional creativity. On one side of this card, you will draw a rectangle, leaving a little room around the edges. 

•  Introduce this as a “window into their future”. Ask Girl Scouts to think about what they see themselves doing in the future. How will you change the world? Ask yourself, what bothers me? What problems do I want to solve? What communities am I a part of, and how do I support them? Knowing what you care about can help you find a job both that you like and that you can use to help others. 

• Ask Girl Scouts to draw their future in the window. They can be as detailed as they would like. 

• Once all Girl Scouts have completed their drawing. Go around and have everyone share. 

• Thank everyone for opening up and sharing their dreams and futures! Say, it is always exciting to hear what you want to do, but how do we turn that into reality is the important part. How do we turn dreams into action? 

• Instruct Girl Scouts to turn over their card and draw one line down the center and one line on either side of that. On the far left column, write “my goal”, in the column to the left of that, write “after high school”, next to that “in high school”, and finally, “today”.

• Instruct Girl Scouts that in the “my goal” box, they will write what their goal is as an “I am” statement. For example, “I am a Doctor”. In the “after high school” box, write what you will do after high school to help set you up for that goal. In the “in high school box”, write something that will help you get closer to that goal that you could do in high school. In “today”, what can you start doing today that will help set you up to reach your goal. (Try to leave it open ended and allow for creativity, examples are below to support!) 

• Once they have completed their boxes, ask Girl Scouts to share with each other!

4. Now What? Thank your Girl Scouts for their participation! Remind them that they can do anything they set their mind to! This is a great spot to provide motivation and support for their hopes and dreams. This activity was developed to show them they can start working towards their goals TODAY! They have a long way away from picking a career, but they always have the chance to follow their dreams and learn new things!

Girl Scouts also now have a map they can use to remind them of their goal and what they need to do to achieve it. Encourage them to share it with others such as their family, teachers, or other mentors who can help support you on your way to career success! 

Click here for a PDF of the activity.