This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Career Exploration with Pathway.

Career Exploration with Pathway It gets so exciting learning about a new, solid resource for your homeschool, doesn’t it? And we just discovered Pathway by Folderwave! If you are wondering what on Earth Folderwave is, read on to learn more about it from Ann McClure and Pamela Brennan, the experts on how it can help with career exploration for students. About Anne McClure and Pamela Brennan Ann McClure Anne is a homeschool mom of 5, starting with a high schooler at 15, all the way down to a toddler at 2. She began homeschooling when her now-15 year old was starting kindergarten. 

Anne has a background in education, previously being a teacher in all different kinds of settings. This background helped instigate her thoughts on what to do next after her firstborn graduates from homeschool high school. 

Therefore, she started her research journey to learn more about what to do in high school and how to prepare her son for college and a career and beyond. This pivotal moment is when Folderwave came into the picture. Pamela Brennan Pamela has a background of 20 years in college admissions, counseling, recruiting, and mostly in operations management. She was a Director of Operations at a selective university in Boston and worked very closely with high school counselors, parents, homeschool parents, and the students (the applicants).

As she was working at the university, she was also working with Folderwave to improve their business process for application processing. But, after 20 years at the university, Pamela wanted a change. She could see the direction that Folderwave was headed and wanted to be a part of their evolution, so she began to work with them full-time and left the university. And now, she’s going on 10 years with Folderwave. How Anne and Pamela Connected When Anne was on a parent panel at a homeschooling conference, the moderator of the panel happened to introduce Anne to the president of Folderwave, Bob. He was seeking some feedback from a homeschool parent perspective about the market itself. 

After discussing different ideas together, they decided to start running focus groups and start developing additional content that would be a bit more geared towards the homeschool market.  About Pathway by Folderwave Folderwave is an evolving company. They went from college admissions to the high school space and then into the career and college counseling space. To Anne and Pamela, Folderwave is all about exploration and getting the kids to explore at an earlier age instead of waiting to the last minute when they're about to graduate high school.

Pathway is a product by Folderwave, and it is a college and career exploration tool meant for students to begin using it as young as 12 years old or 6th grade. Students can access Pathway online and use their tools to discover more about their interests. And it's all about self-discovery  They have assessment personality tests to help get kids to start thinking about things new to them and peak their interest levels. Then, it ties that interest to different possibilities for careers out there. It’s a nonabrasive approach for kids to discover new interests. 

Kids can save activities of interest throughout their time with it. They can reflect on their interests or activities with journaling or even with a reflections piece just to see how much they have changed or their growth over the years. Investigate Your Future With Career Planning Pathway has a state of the art, up to date, up to the minute program called Investigate Your Future With Career Planning that helps analyze certain aspects of jobs they might be interested in, job markets, future trends, and so many more amazing investigative tools kids can use to research more about their interests.  Resume Builder Pathway recently updated its resume builder for students to use for all sorts of scenarios,