Are your students aware of what jobs will be needed in the future?

Yesterday Wesley Intermediate had an exciting opportunity to be part of the "Just be" expo held at the local community centre. It was a great day, and an awesome opportunity for our Year 8's to get to know some older students from the local colleges.

The day was designed around looking at future careers and involved the likes of the police, fire service, and other people or companies working in the area. I was lucky enough to end up running some workshops from Rui at Critical, who is an architect and problem solver who looks at the needs of the community around him and develops products and ideas alongside businesses to help create sustainable ideas, services and products. It was great fun having 15 minutes to teach the idea of design and development to some students who may have otherwise never imagined they had the potential to be creative. I do hope some sparks were lit from this experience.

Yet in the end, what I came to realise is that within the community I work, I believe there to be a big need for information to be shared around potential pathways that will lead to careers for our young students. Many of the kids from my school had no idea what they wanted to be, which is normal for a 12 year old, but many of the jobs they may look at for the future will potentially be taken over by robots or other tech being designed and created.

One student had said they would like to work in a sport shop, selling cool sports gear to people. This was great that they had a goal, yet that very same night, I had seen on the news the rise of chatbot technology, which would almost make this job obsolete. This has really got me thinking about the careers our kids may end up in, and how we can help break the cycle of poverty and low socioeconomic issues.

so I will leave you with this question.

What can we do as teachers to lead our students down a path that will provide better opportunities in their futures? 
(other than teach them the necessary skills for a particular job set)




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