Language arts and career exploration teacher Andree Liscoscos wanted the 10th graders at Santa Maria High School in California to take something tangible away from her class. With that goal in mind, she designed a career portfolio that has proved to be helpful to her students and personally valuable to them.

The portfolio is a legal-sized file folder inside of which is a smaller attached folder. The larger folder contains information from each student's budget and personal profile exercises in Career Choices, materials on various colleges and career fields, and hints about job applications and interviews. The smaller inside folder acts as an "instant job kit," containing resume, sample applications, and names and phone numbers of people who have agreed to serve as references for class members. The smaller folder can be easily detached from the larger one and taken along on job interviews.

A major addition to the portfolio is a four-year plan, covering the remainder of the students' high school career and their first year out of school. In addition, each student writes a letter to his or her parents "about me in one to five years." Parents read the letters and view the portfolios during spring open house, and Liscoscos encourages them to respond to what they've read. Students get extra credit when parents participate.

The letters were very positive, Liscoscos says, and parents showed a lot of enthusiasm. The students, too, were enthusiastic about the class, which included actually looking, applying and interviewing for summer jobs. Most had found one by the end of the school year.