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Preparing for Success in Corporate America
By La Shawn Samuel
New Career Guide Helps College Students Compete in the Work Force
LORTON, Va. – Entering the work force for the first time is an ever-growing challenge and often a significant source of stress for new college graduates. La Shawn Samuel draws upon her vast experience in career planning, professional development and human relations to provide Preparing for Success in Corporate America—College Guide (now available through AuthorHouse), a new guide that helps students successfully enter and compete in today’s corporate job market.
This book is a basic guide for college students as well as anyone trying to break into the job market for the first time. It takes readers through a comprehensive planning and preparation process, covering every stage of the transition from college to career in order to ensure professional achievement.
Samuel offers a step-by-step, easy-to-read method on the principles of career success and provides readers with the unwritten corporate rules that cannot be found in most other guides. She illustrates techniques for building a résumé, preparing for an interview and remaining competitive in an ever-changing job market. Included in the guide are sample cover letters, résumés, thank you letters, acceptance letters and resignation letters aimed at producing maximum results. Readers will learn how other successful professionals are thriving in the work force and what is needed to meet and exceed an employer’s expectations.
Samuel lives in northern Virginia and works for the federal government. She has worked as a senior human resource professional for both the private and public sectors. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Claflin University and a Master of Arts from George Mason University. Samuel enjoys mentoring students and adults in achieving their personal and professional goals. She develops a range of youth activities in her community to foster leadership development and has conducted professional workshops at several colleges and universities on the art of success in the corporate job market. Her goal is to motivate and inspire students to plan for success and take responsibility for their destiny. Preparing for Success in Corporate America is her first published work.
Samuel currently writes a monthly column in South Carolina Women magazine entitled ‘Career Management in a Minute.’ She offers proven professional tips and techniques on managing and advancing professional careers.
Preparing for Success in Corporate America – College Guide may be purchased by valid vendors (i.e., churches, colleges, and professional organizations) for 40% off the regular retail price by going to www.authorhouse.com or calling 1-888-280-7715.
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Using Cooperative Learning Groups to Accelerate Student Achievement by Matthew Lynch
As stated earlier, African American students may benefit from small-group work and peer tutoring. Also, teachers should select reading materials that include realistic young people with whom African American students can relate. Select books that accentuate the learner’s lifestyle, morals, desires, speech, and mannerisms. Teachers should also select instructional materials that include a variety of ethnic groups, not just African Americans.
When organizing instructional activities for small group work, realize that the room may not always be quiet, and some students may even stray off task at times. Nonetheless, students need to have opportunities to work on problems together and to discuss different ways of solving a problem. In addition, this approach gives students a chance to hear other opinions and to realize that there may be many methods for completing a task. Group activities also promote social development and cross-racial friendships. Small group work can include:
- Cooperative Learning: This technique involves having students work together in groups.
- Peer Tutoring: This person-to-person interaction encourages nurturing relationships between learners. With this strategy, the teacher persuades students to tutor each other and problem-solve together as part of a small group.
Ideas That Work: Strategies to Empower African American Learners by Matthew Lynch
Because African American learners thrive on interaction with their peers, teachers should use a variety of stimuli and encourage students to work cooperatively in small groups. African American students appreciate oral communication. Their relational style prefers the arts. Black students profit from creative and lively settings that encourage higher-order thinking skills and promote open-ended divergent thinking. In addition, they excel when learning material through self-expression in visual, dramatic, and musical arts.
To be effective with the African American population, teachers should include the creative arts in interdisciplinary units to teach literature and history. Students should have frequent opportunities to move around, speak, read aloud, and participate in hands-on activities. African American students learn best when they are asked to perform a variety of tasks relevant to their everyday lives. Teachers can relate the curriculum to personal experiences and encourage students to deal with social issues from a fair or unfair viewpoint that are connected to peace, justice, values, economic equity, and self-esteem.
When teaching content areas such as science or math, teachers ought to approach these subjects through the contributions of Africans. Further, they should offer lessons that provide positive information on the culture and history of African Americans, so as to build pride in their racial heritage and cultural self-esteem.
African American children tend to be motivated by the practical and not the hypothetical. African American children generally prefer playing with real babies rather than with dolls, giving directions by pointing out landmarks rather than by observing street signs, and preparing food by trial and error rather than by following a recipe. In addition, he observed that African American children tend to remember faces and not names.
In her book Other People’s Children, Lisa Delpit suggests the following practical tips for addressing different learning styles:
--When teaching writing, have students listen to rap songs in order to develop a rule base for their creation. Then have students teach the teacher and their classmates the rules for writing their rap. Transfer this concept to the rules governing the composition of other genres that will be studied.
--Have students listen to a variety of oral and written language styles and discuss the impact of those styles on the message and the likely effect on different audiences. Then recreate the texts using different language styles appropriate for different audiences such as a church group, academics, rap singers, or politicians.
--Have students interview various personnel officers in actual workplaces about their attitudes toward different styles in oral and written language. Follow up with a discussion of the interview results.
--Have students study and analyze book language. Then have the students translate the book language into a familiar language style that they are used to.
--Have students or groups of students create a bi-dialectal dictionary of their own language form and Standard English.
--Take a bulletin board and divide it in half. On the left side, display words or phrases from the students’ writing. Label this side “Our Heritage Language.” On the right side, list translations of the students’ writing into Standard English. Label this list “Formal English.”
Having an open mind as well as understanding and believing that different learning styles exist will allow educators to implement more diverse teaching styles in their classrooms, which will ultimately help students from all backgrounds.
Teachers may occasionally insert some Black English dialect into their discussions with African American students. Only teachers who have developed a positive relationship with learners should use this type of communication; otherwise this form of interaction could be seen as demeaning. Furthermore, teachers should tell African American students that although Black English dialect is acceptable in their homes and neighborhood, it is not accepted in all situations. Even so, when the teacher uses the learner’s dialect occasionally, the learner may be more willing to take on tasks he or she might otherwise refuse to do.
Teachers should not only try to speak to Black students in a familiar way, they should also know how students interact and respond during class discussions. After numerous classroom observations, Foster noted that African American students had a tendency to blurt out comments without raising their hands more often than White students. As a result, they were viewed as troublemakers. Regardless of the fact that the students wanted to enthusiastically participate and did not need to be pushed for comments, teachers considered the active participation to be a rule violation rather than an indication of student interest.
Matthew Lynch is an Exceptional Education Teacher, owner of Lynch Consulting Group, LLC and a Doctoral Candidate at Jackson State University. In his second book, "Matthew and the Money Tree", he tackles the issues of poverty and greed. He is also the author of Closing the Racial Academic Achievement Gap, and a children’s book, entitled Matthew and the Money Tree. Mr. Lynch is a contributing columnist for Renaissance Man Magazine, Bahiyah Women’s Magazine and Emerging Minds Magazine, etc. Born and raised in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, he currently resides in Jackson, Mississippi.
ISBN: 0977960854
ISBN-13: 9780977960859
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Lynch Publishing
32 pages
Year Published: August 2006