De-stressing Career Planning
Talks about career options or work/life balance can sometimes feel forced, or boring. And some students might see these as stressful decisions that seem like they’re points of no return.
This doesn’t have to be the case, of course. One easy way to get these conversations happening: start with your students. What do they care most passionately about? What makes them tick? These are the kinds of questions that get them excited about their futures and their potential.
This Collection is a perfect way to get students thinking about their futures in a way that doesn’t feel like a 19th Century vocational workbook. It’s super simple and has a lot to spark student imagination, too. Here’s how it’s broken down:
Focus on you
Exploring careers of today and the future
Back to you!
Focus on You
The opening of this Collection gets students thinking about their interests, passions, and skills. Before it gets too heavy, there’s a funny but bang-on video from Josh Shipp that drives the point home in a friendly way. The message is that if you plan your work life around making other people happy, you’re forgetting about the most important person in your life.
Then there’s an opportunity for students to do some free-form thinking about themselves, and even get feedback from others. You can go as deep as you want into this part—there’s a chance to go deeper later, or not at all if you’d rather use this as a whole class exploration.
Exploring Careers of Today and the Future
This is the real heart of the Collection: an interactive “timeline” of videos and articles on 10 different careers, including a few that are possibilities for the future. Because there’s so much to explore, there are a few ways you could approach this one, for example:
Break into groups based on who is interested in specific careers or videos (they could also explore this career further in the Edwin library and on the web)
Ask each student to find one that they are most interested in
Explore one career as a class in depth (talk through skills, interests, and what preparation for this career might look like), and then you can do one of the above from there
With any of the above, ask students to share their learning back with the class
My personal favourites are the 360 video of the mine shaft tour… just in case nobody picks mining, you should know it’s there! Kids love playing with that one. And the “That’s a Real Job!” videos from Let’s Talk Science are great short ones to spark creativity. If you pick one to look at together as a class, go directly to the future in the timeline.
Back to You!
Here’s where students really get down to work, and start applying the cool things they’ve seen in the videos to their own lives.
Like everything in Edwin, you can approach this in whatever way suits you and your students. Here are two options:
Use the slides
The pre-built slide deck is intended for use by students. It will guide their thinking through brainstorming, researching, self-reflection, and creating their own collection about career options. This option has maximum flexibility, because of course you can edit the slides however you’d like before sharing.Just go straight into a collection project
This is a great way to show students how to create and edit a collection if they haven’t tried it yet. Slides 3 and 4 from the pre-built deck could still be useful, or you can paste suggestions or instructions right into a blank collection and share that with them. Once they realize how much they can play and create in a collection, just sit back and watch the magic happen!
In Summary
This is just one collection that stood out to me, but there are specific ones on STEM Careers and Exploring Careers in Geography that get right into career profiles on cool jobs. Check them all out, mix and match, and take an approach that you think will work best for your students.
Depending on your students’ comfort levels with searching the Edwin library and the web, you could scaffold with potential search terms, like “careers,” “job,” or “skills.” Note your results in Edwin will depend on what provinces, grades, and subjects you’ve chosen in the Edwin library (if you want to make changes, check out this article on how to customize your library).
With this Collection, hopefully you can make career talks inspiring instead of tiring!
Aside from careers, there are a lot of amazing collections on creativity and innovation in general to get students thinking about creating their own paths. Check them out!