The Ginac Group : Methodology : Case Studies

Sira Tamer, 2nd Grade School Teacher

Problem: Sira is a 55-year-old Lebanese woman living in New Orleans. She is recently divorced and living with her three children. Her three children are in middle school and Sira hasn't worked as a 1st grade school teacher since the birth of her first child. Sira has been feeling upset and anxious for several months about her career direction and need to re-enter the workforce in order to support her family. She is concerned about her ability to find meaningful work, worries about her outdated skills and has no idea how the work environment has changed.

Solution: The Ginac Group advised Sira to complete a career interest and values inventory which indicated that she had strong interests in art, social services, teaching and writing. We designed a program that helped Sira obtain detailed occupational and local job market information. With this information, we reviewed the skills and abilities for several occupations that Sira found interesting and compared them to the skills that she had from working, volunteering and being a full-time mom. Having this information made Sira realize that the work world hadn't changed as much as she first thought. We helped Sira with interview preparation and rewriting her resume. Over a several month period, Sira identified several jobs that interested her through the internet and local newspaper, and obtained a job with the local elementary school teaching 2nd grade. Sira is thrilled to be teaching at the same middle school as her children as it eliminates a lot of stress with finding day care for after school.