High school

Removing the Blindfold: High School, College, and Career Planning for Families

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What if you had never seen an elephant? Blindfolded, you touched a portion of the elephant—the tusk, an ear, the tail. Each blindfolded person would know something about the elephant, but they would not understand all that the elephant is. To understand what an elephant truly is, you need to remove the blindfold so you can see it all.

The moral of this ancient Indian parable is about absolute truth; however, the general concept is relevant to At The Core. Families come to At The Core for various reasons. Maybe you saw a College Credit Plus webinar or connected with an 8th grade parent program offered at your high school? Perhaps, you first learned about us from a career tech coffee chat? Maybe a friend told you about the career exploration work their child did with our team?

No matter how you came to us, you “know” us in different ways.

We are different things to different people depending on your input point. It is easy to never know about resources available to you. Our challenge at At The Core is to remove that blindfold and open your eyes to the variety of ways we support families with high school, college, and career planning.

Once that blindfold is removed, you can see the whole elephant and have at your disposal the tools you will find helpful.

Recently, we revamped our About page to try to better convey the support available for families. I guess you could say the About page is our elephant.

At The Core

Have you seen this graphic at one of our programs?

We are visual people. We developed this circle because families come to us with different needs, and this representation helps us to explain how we help. Everything At The Core does falls into a segment of this circle.

Starting with a focus on self assessment helps students gain an understanding of who they are, what their strengths and interests are — what’s in their heads and in their hearts.

Career exploration is naturally tied to the self assessment process. A student can begin to connect their strongest traits and interest to jobs that they could love.

Finally, the third segment of the circle is educational path planning. Once a student has a strong sense of who they are and also has some ideas of careers that might be a fit for them, they can begin to plan for the educational steps to take to prepare for those careers (credentials, certifications, degrees, licensing, etc.).

What are our most popular tools for families?

We’ll share all these in a list here. Some you may need now. Some you may need later. (Tuck this blog away somewhere.) Some you may never need, but we hope having this list will open your eyes to some things you weren’t aware of before.

Finally, we are just here for you!

We have always felt strongly that parents need a place to turn to ask a quick question. And, we really and truly welcome you to do just that.

You can email, call us at (614) 404-0646, Facebook Message, or chat on our website (when we are live).

If we can answer your quick question quickly, we will certainly do that! Because we’re trying to help you well, we’ll let you know if your question (and the discussion of related topics you might not be considering) is better answered in a one-on-one meeting.

Families don’t all need support in the same ways, but our mission is to empower you with the tools you need when you need them.

We know that you are trying to navigate the waters of middle school and high school while thinking ahead to college and career. And, we know all this can be tricky.

Take comfort in the fact that whatever you decide to do is a great decision. All we ever want is for you to find a trusted resource. For the past ten years, for thousands of families, we have been honored to be that resource. Please check out the resources listed above and keep in touch!


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