What is Career Awareness?
Career awareness is a process that can help children and young people to learn what it takes to enter and be successful in a work setting that interests them.
In this post, you will learn:
How to nurture the learning process?
How to develop career awareness?
Consider what this could mean for you and for your family and let's begin:
How to nurture the learning process
Let's get started:
September is approaching and this school year is almost over. How many parents keep in mind that their children are in school to prepare for the world of work? What children learn in school matters for their future success and happiness. If we value their learning, we will also value the importance of developing career awareness when they are young.
Whether they started school this year or are continuing their studies from last year, the end of a school year is the time when parents and carers begin to notice how their kids are doing academically. And some consider buying end of year gifts for children and their teachers in order to reward good performance and achievements in the school subjects.
Gifts can be motivational tools to inspire learners and their teachers to achieve more - not just for marking the end of term or holidays. Are they having fun with numbers and learning to enjoy mathematics? Are they doing well in spelling? Do they like writing? Are they good readers? How can we teach best? What is learning and how do we learn?
These are questions that interest not only teachers and tutors but also parents and carers. Whether we are at work or are at home, with or without children, everyone of us must learn new things these days, because technology and society are changing so fast. And, we don’t want to be left behind.
So, here we go:
One way of understanding what learning is may be to view it as a process of creation: when we learn we create a new understanding, a new perception, a new way of approaching the world and our lives.
We don’t want to treat learning as simply a process of transmission of information and instructions from one person to another. That's why we give motivational gifts and rewards! We consider learning to be a creative process. The ownership of the process belongs to the learner. Parents’ and carers’ role as teachers is to help to facilitate the process.
So, what does this all mean?
To nurture the learning process do these three things:
- connect learners with their creativity
- help them to develop new insights
- and, enrich their communication skills.
Why career awareness matters
In essence:
1) However we choose our future career, it is more enjoyable if that choice takes into account our interests and the activities that we enjoy doing. Research shows that people are more satisfied with their careers if their choice was based on their interests and the activities that they enjoy the most.
2) And career exploration begins with carer awareness. Preparing now will help children and young people to make successful decisions later because they will be aware of their options. They can learn to take responsibility for their own learning, careers and lives and they will achieve more if they are internally motivated to realise their aspirations.
3) Parents, carers and teachers can help children and young people by talking about options and timeframes for career choices in order to raise their awareness when they are still young. Discussing what their choices and options may be in the future will prevent fear of missing out or feeling overwhelmed later.
4) Planning for the future may have short term as well as long term benefits because aspirations begin to be translated into actions in the present whether at school or at home. Starting to plan ahead has benefits for current performance in school, both socially and academically. Children and young people who have goals study and work with an enhanced sense of purpose and may achieve more.
5) Giving expression to hopes and dreams for the future and planning ahead are known to increase the likelihood that children and young people will be happy to study and work hard to achieve them. Children and young people who are aware of the choices available to them in the future are more likely to be successful.
Let's recap:
Career awareness is a process that can help children and young people to learn what it takes to enter and be successful in a work setting that interests them.
People choose careers for many different reasons.
- Some people focus on what they've grown up around and choose their parents' careers;
- Some people choose a career based on salary;
- Some people start working somewhere and then stay in that job.
Do you want your kids to make informed decisions and choose careers that will make them happy and sucessful? Developing career awareness is the solution!
How to develop career awareness
Let me show you how:
What we enjoy most about our Lego Stories and #creativeplay writing events in the community is how parents and carers join talking, writing and playing with the Lego together with the children and young people who attend. That #creativeplay writing is not a competitive activity, not a competition!
At our #creativeplay writing events children sometimes re-tell a well known children’s story with a different take. They may begin with a story like Cinderella or Three Little Pigs or Red Riding Hood and then change it while narrating the story. They may change some of the details or the whole plot so that in the end the story becomes completely new and original. (We are publishing their stories in our STORY LIBRARY and you will find examples there.)
These children are like film directors who re-reinterpret earlier works and re-make them from new perspectives. (Sherlock Holmes and Dracula on the BBC are recent examples.) Children are not film directors with multimillion budgets but they seem to have the same instincts when they are creating stories with Lego: as they are playing with the Lego and set the scene for their story, they begin to improvise and make changes.
Developing career awareness is like providing them with a rich stock of stories – careers - and allowing them to tell and re-tell and re-create the content. Career awareness gives opportunities to children and young people about future career options and possibilities.
Who will find it easier to tell a new story? The child who already knows many stories or a few stories?
Career awareness is similar in that if we let children learn about the jobs and occupations that are available, they will be more successful when they choose their careers.
Why? Think about that for a minute ...
In short, for these reasons: Because they will be better informed. They will be aware of the possibilities. They will get the chance to be more creative with their choices when decision time comes. They will choose occupations that they are good at, make them happy and they enjoy.
Final Thoughts
So, in our view, the best presents for this holiday season are the ones that connect learners with their creativity, help them to develop new insights and enrich their communication skills.
Get a present that can help you to facilitate new learning for your loved ones: download the career awareness Workbook 1.
So, take the next step: download the workbook and discover how it works like a treat.
As Skoory says: "achieving goals is easy: plan for the journey, jump over obstacles and problem solve along the way"!
