BSEL Library: Part 2 of Career Building - What Shoes Will you Wear?

In part one, we shared a great book for introducing career exploration to young elementary students. However, there's another great resource to share with you as well! If you're looking to dive a little deeper into career exploration with elementary students, look no further than 
What Shoes Will You Wear? By Julia Cook, illustrated by Anita Dufalla

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What Shoes Will You Wear? is a creative yet engaging book that's geared towards slightly older students or deeper discussion than the introductory book we shared in part one. It's a great resource to have on your bookshelf when teaching students to begin thinking about their current skills and future career aspirations!

These are some aspects of the book I really enjoy:
- This book gives so many options of future careers to explore! It's not your typical "firefighter," "teacher," "doctor" types of suggestions. One page has a list of seventeen career clusters alone! It really opens students eyes to just how many options they truly have.
- The author emphasizes that you can start thinking about your career as a child, but students don't need to decide until their older. I like that this reduces the pressure or anxiety of making lifelong choices, but still treats thinking about your future as an important thing to do today.
- The book creatively explores careers through the shoes each career might wear. Students will find this fun, engaging, and inspiring to consider future jobs in the same way. 
- What Shoes Will you Wear? includes "The Big List" of skills students can learn now that will help them in whatever career they choose! Some skills included are communication skills, integrity, problem solving skills, creative thinking, and more. 

A few things you should consider about this book:

• Because the book is packed full of so much good information, I would recommend it for older students, namely grades 3 and above. The book is not an introduction but rather a deeper dive, with more specific suggestions that will be better comprehended by a more mature student group. Yet, the book is age-appropriate enough to read with some middle schoolers in my opinion!
• It is a longer book for read aloud. It would be great to read over a couple of days of a career unit, discussing each type of shoe as you go. 

Here are a few ways to use this book in the classroom:
Break it down to serve as the foundation of a career mini-unit. Over the course of 3-5 days, you could work through the book, learning and discussing career exploration as you go.
Complete a career project using shoes, and make a bulletin board. Students can choose a career to research, writing about their chosen career and pairing it with a picture or drawing of the shoe that career would wear. Then, post their picture and writing on a bulletin board!
Explore careers for special education transition purposes. In addition to a fabulous whole group book for grades 3 through 5, I would use this book with slightly older special education students to plan for their post-secondary transitions. Older students can choose a career of interest and begin building post-secondary goals around it.

Between "There's No Dream Too Tall" and "What Shoes Will You Wear?" teachers have a great toolbox for career read alouds of all ages! 

We already know books provide opportunities to teach just about any skill, and that includes behavioral, social, and emotional skills, too! Through character, conflict, and more, BSEL skills can be found on nearly every page. A library of BSEL books gives you endless options to incorporate academics as well. Grab some BSEL books and get teaching! ***This post contains affiliate links. Braving BSEL makes a small commission when you purchase using our links. Thank you for your support!***