Best Practices for Personal Education Plans (PEP’s)

One of the pressing needs of employers today, is for their workers to have different sets of knowledge and skills, including positive attitudes, good work habits, the ability to learn a diverse set of tasks, problem solving, communication, and interpersonal skills.

Connecticut Department of Labor, 2001

What is a Personal Education Plan?

Beginning in grade 7 students should start to keep a portfolio that they update and complete throughout their education/life. There are many names for such a portfolio but in this case it will be called a Personal Education Plan, in short a PEP. The PEP should include a student’s personal characteristics, objectives and goals in life, student projects and work samples, work placement reflections, certificates, reference letters and recommendations that are oriented toward preparation for post secondary education and/or the world of work. All schools should develop a range of ways to recognize the achievements of their students during their school life. Qualifications, awards and certificates should allow the achievements of all students to be recognized.

What is its purpose?

Personal Education Plans provide evidence of a students’ knowledge and skills in working with people, data and things. It also provides a repository for student work. They can be used to build a students self confidence, demonstrate a students likes and dislikes and most importantly demonstrate to employers a students skills and abilities.

Developing a Personal Education Plan

A students PEP should be designed to display their BEST work and accomplishments throughout their life. Students should be reminded that high schools, college/university admissions and employers may use portions of their completed PEP to judge their academic ability, maturity, skills and motivation.

The standard components of a PEP include:

• An appropriate three ring binder (preferably with plastic sheet covers to hold papers).
• A typed letter of introduction and possibly a table of contents.
• Typed resume.
• References from past employers. The more a student has the better.
• An official High School Diploma, College, Vocational and/or University certificates accomplished.
• Various documents reflecting personal interests and achievements including: public speaking, sports, first aid, voluntary work, work placements, workshops taken etc.

Students are advised to start and maintain a PEP throughout their school and working lives and to add to it regularly as they master skills relevant to their career objectives.

Examples of Personal Education Plans

http://amby.com/kimeldorf/sampler/ This web site offers samples of portfolios for all students to look at.

http://amby.com/kimeldorf/Porfolio_Sampler.pdf Here is an example of a portfolio sampler.

http://www.colby-sawyer.edu/campus-life/career/search_prep/portfolios.html This is a printable page of information to high school students when they are wanting to start refining their portfolio.

http://www.career.fsu.edu/ccis/guides/port.html This web site targets grade 11 students who are going off to find work or who are going onto post secondary education.

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