By: Flora Wade, SHS Media
Salem High School is offering a new resource to help students plan and prepare for life after graduation. Through generations, the ideas and stigmas behind college, trades and military after high school, have changed. It is important that high schools adapt to these changes, so students can pick whichever pathway suits them best. Karen Barry plans to work alongside the counselors by focusing on the students' passions and building their schedule to match their future plans. She will help the students get a bigger picture filled with new opportunities.
In the beginning of the school year, Barry will have a heavy focus on the seniors while she works to get to know each individual and the direction they want to head after school. Every student, no matter their grade level, will get a minimum 30-40 minute coaching session each school year. This could involve personality and career testing from sites like DeBruce Agilities and Myers-Briggs.
These career tests will help students get a baseline of what they would like to do, while the career coach helps them explore based off of their results; a way to narrow the student’s focus. She will also be heavily focused on community engagement.
“The coaching is very much about what the students want and not about what I want,” Barry said.
A lifetime resident of Salem, as well as a Salem High School graduate, Barry is excited to be back at her alma mater. She has a bachelor’s degree in education and has been in that field for 30 years. Additionally, she is a certified life coach specializing in careers. Barry has spent time helping with the JAG (Jobs for American Graduates) program at West Washington in previous years and campaigned to get the program started at Salem. She has had two prior years of coaching experience at SHS when she was serving through a grant, now she is employed by the school full time.
In December 2024, the State Board of Education redesigned diploma tracks for Indiana. The graduating class of 2029 will be the first to experience these new diploma types, they include: enrollment, employment and enlistment. High school schedules will then be tailored to decisions after graduation whether that is continuing education in college, moving into the workforce or going to the military. School days will look different compared to the traditional seven period schedule that is filled with classes that may not fit the students’ needs.
“We want to strengthen and develop our relationship with community partners, as well as industry and business leaders, because a big part of the graduation pathways, the new changes in the diploma tracks, is going to include work-based learning opportunities and hours,” Barry said.
She believes that one hour a day in a community industry is not impactful, for the student nor the business and likes the set up of the new requirements.
For example “If an individual wants to go into healthcare in some capacity, maybe they don't know specifically what type of capacity, but we can connect with the hospital and maybe they can spend two weeks in this area, or two weeks in that area, or going there maybe three to four hours a day. There's a lot of financial opportunities available with connecting with high school students and business and industries that we can help create even paid internship opportunities,” Barry said.
Around 10 years ago when she worked at the high school, there was a lot of pressure that every student had to go to college. Now, there has been a dip in that trend and students are swinging to the opposite side of the pendulum. Barry’s focus is on a happy medium.
“We are always going to need doctors' lawyers, teachers, we're always going to need that…” she said, explaining that some professions require college degrees.
“But we also need plumbers and HVAC and IT people that don't need six to eight years of college…one is no better or worse than the other.”
Barry wants to assist in eliminating the social stigma around many jobs and help students build a flexible schedule to pursue their passions.
“I'm just not a person that believes everybody has to have everything figured out as soon as they graduate high school. You don't have to have everything figured out. You just need to know what your next step's going to be,” Barry said.