We Help Students Visualize Careers in Your Community
As employers across the state of Tennessee continue to project a shortage of qualified workers, the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry identified the need for a new system that will make career awareness and preparation more seamless for students, parents, employers and educators.
The TN Chamber partnered with Chattanooga-based Thinking Media to launch a career-based curriculum, the Tennessee Career Awareness and Preparation System or TN-CAPS, for educators that illustrates localized, career-focused pathways for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Teachers are able to download classroom-ready, age-appropriate lesson plans that illustrate the tasks common to careers that local businesses desire, and then link to actual local businesses near the specific school allowing more students to identify high-demand career paths that tie to new economy jobs, thereby preventing a shortage of qualified workers.
“At the Chamber we continue to hear of the lack of qualified and prepared candidates for jobs in our state from our most prominent employers," said Bradley Jackson, CEO, TN Chamber. "We believe the TN-CAPS system will address this by providing great ways for teachers to easily link what they are doing in the classroom with regionally available careers and allow students to gain exposure to the local companies filling that future workforce pipeline."
TN-CAPS is being offered to selected schools in six pilot communities in January 2020, led by these regional chambers:
- Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce
- Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce
- Collierville Partners in Education
- Jackson Chamber of Commerce
- Kingsport Chamber of Commerce
- Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce
Pilot partners at local Chambers, employers and schools will benefit from aggregated experience and expertise across the State of Tennessee for the implementation of strategies, systems and resources that improve school-to-career transitions for all students. Pilot partners will collaborate with each other and their respective Chambers to inform Thinking Media’s development of the localized TN-CAPS portal.
TN-CAPS is be available to any school, although the localized information will initially be for the current pilots. It is planned to offer complete local data statewide this fall.