Jobs, Gender and Youthful Hopes for the Future
Students of Ms. Hanley’s Grade Three/Four class at Grindrod Elementary were ready for the moment—and they delivered in spades.
On Wednesday, educators from an international charity came to the rural school for a one hour presentation to talk about the world of work and who the students want to be later in life. UK-based Education and Employers has worked for the Ministry of Education and Child Care for three years running in-person and virtual activities in K-8 BC schools for a two month period during the school year. Wednesday was the first time the charity did an in-person session with students outside of the Lower Mainland and Victoria.
The charity specializes in researching career-related learning and have done cutting edge work on gender stereotypes in the workplace. Its research shows some students as young as five years of age already label certain jobs with certain genders. Part of the charity’s aim is to shatter those stereotypes to showcase any gender can aspire to work any job they wish. Today’s classroom example was Margarita Alejandre.
Vernon’s Alejandre works at Rapid Span in the Armstrong Industrial Park where she builds bridges. She has 15 years experience as a red seal welder and metal fabricator. One job she is working on now is building some of the bridging for the Skytrain expansion between Surrey and Langley. The Ironworkers Local 712 member says her job has taken her across North America which is something she never imagined when she was in Fine Arts school. In her second year of school, she picked up a welding torch as part of an assigned arts project and she’s been watching the sparks fly since.
However, before getting into this background, students in Ms. Hanley’s class had to guess what her job was in a game called “Guess My Job”. Students had to ask indirect questions to learn about how she did her job before they could try to guess it. Students fired out nearly twenty questions such as “do you work at night?”, “do you work with people?” with her giving only yes/no answers. Following this, the students started to make their guesses. On the second question, Grade Four student Bailey Dekker guessed she was a welder. It turns out Bailey’s mom is also a welder.
Other activities students did were to draw an occupation they would be interested in doing for a career. Jobs shared by the nearly twenty students in attendance ranged from trades to academics to athletics to one students wanting to be a nail technician. The students also worked in pairs where they shared what skills they have and that partner gave them an idea what kinds of jobs could fit those skills.
Education and Employers will be conducting two more virtual sessions around the province in the next couple of weeks before they head back to Europe. Some SD83 educators have already signed up their students for these sessions.
If you have interesting ideas to share about your career to a class, please reach out to George Richard, SD83 Career Education Coordinator, via text and phone at 778-824-1188 or you can email grichard@sd83.bc.ca.