The Southern Interior Regional members gathered for a sharing and learning session April 29-30 in Kamloops. Many, many ideas were shared and the group was pleased to host both Jessi Zielke and Wendy Gilmour who gave informative presentations on Career Education. Here are the notes from the two days.
K – 12 Career Education in BC and CLE
Vivian Collyer, Career Education and Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies, Learning Transformation Division, BC Ministry of Education - Seconded to work on curriculum implementation.
- Career Curriculum is being redesigned and it is not just about work careers but about transitions in all parts of life. It starts in Kindergarten and goes all the way to grade 12. It is about lifelong learning in an ever changing world. CLE curriculum will be posted online on Friday, May 4th. Teachers need to be familiar with the Core Competencies. CLE - Career Life Education will be implemented July 2018 (gr 10) and CLC - Career Life Connections (draft) will be implemented July 2019 (gr 11 & 12).
Wendy Gilmour, Career Education writing team, Vancouver School Board Apprenticeship Teacher, championing students in trades programs.
- Career Development has been added as the 3rd goal. The curriculum team was implemented in the spring of 2015. It is important to relook at the website as a lot has changed from when it was in the draft state. The curriculum will be available only online and feedback will always be available.
- Next steps for teachers and districts - Discuss the implementation at your school and district. Provide feedback to the Ministry. Be a leader for teachers to help them teach this course. Change is hard but the more prep work done the further we will be ahead. Let’s fix the problems and create a curriculum so that our students are prepared to enter the work force and life after grade 12.
- Discussion on how this is going to fit in to the already crammed timetable. What is the Capstone project and what does it look like. The hardest part is we all need to get out of the box and do things differently.
Jessi Zielke, CES Executive Director
- All members are encouraged to join the CES Community of Practice Sharing site - cescareereducationcommunity.ning.com. This site is a place to share ideas, ask questions or voice concerns. It allows everyone to collaborate together. The site has discussion groups, resources, videos and blogs. It is updated with new information regularly. CES is working hard to provide support and resources to help with the transition and implementation of the new curriculum.
SD73 Career Education Program 2018-2020 - Sheryl Lindquist, Allisson Badger and Robert Wielgoz presented on the SD73 Careers program so far. All secondary schools have a key contact and elementary contacts are in the works.
Mock Audit – A mock audit was done in January with the Kamloops TNT Coordinators. Sheryl Lindquist presented on the process and resource sheets were distributed.
TRU Programs and information – Dwayne Geiger presented on the new developments at TRU including new programs and enrollment plans. TRU’s success equation - Industry + Community + Recognized Training = Student Success.
District Sharing Presentations
- SD 73 Kamloops/Thompson – Allisson Badger – Our classrooms are providing leadership, coding, career fairs, hands on experience, field experience, goal setting just to name a few. Jennica Alpaugh, spoke on working with Jr. Achievement to teach her students about creating a business. With the help of business partners they created a business plan to sell Christmas ornaments at an outdoor market. They found materials and made the ornaments and then set up at the market. The total profit made from sales was $785.00 which was donated to Christmas Amalgamated. Five students from her class have now started their own business.
- Rob Wielgoz – Trades Mini Samplers have been created in partnership with the BIG Little Science Centre. Two sessions are offered in Electrical and Plumbing.
- SD 74 Gold Trail – Karen Miller – The district is developing a network to explore and review resources and support teachers providing opportunities for Professional Development. They need implementation models, how to get people to think outside of the box, teacher training and support.
- The programs and projects they are most proud of are the creation of their new network; planning meetings; growth mindset education; Parents as Career Coaches workshop; CAT meeting doing Industry Tour in Kamloops; Discover Industry Within – grade 9 industry tours; Interior Heavy Equipment Operators school field trip; Young Entrepreneurs Growing and Introduction to Woodworking in the classroom for elementary teachers.
- SD 19 Revelstoke – Jeff Colvin – The district is doing Skill Exploration courses, implemented a fire crew program and Trail building (off timetable course). A Trades Sampler will begin next year doing ½ days all year with an extended day. They will be using the English department to run CLE and CLC. Two credits for grade 10, two credits for grade 11 and four credits for grade 12. By offering the course at every grade level, the hope is to show it is a life long journey. Revelstoke Mountain Resort has partnered with the district for ski patrol and summer jobs. Wages start at $14.00 per hour and if they stay for the whole summer they will get another $2.00 per hour.
- SD 27 Cariboo-Chilcotin – Dave Corbett – It has been a difficult year with the impact of last summer’s wildfires. The Building Buddies program has been a success with young students coming in to high schools to work with older classes. Other programs being implemented are Maker; Yes To It Discover programs that partner with TRU Williams Lake campus; Structure Fire Fighting; Mind Over Metal camps; Ms. Infinity program which matches interested girls with Science professionals. ADST is really doing well with lots of high tech mini programs. Trades training are expanding into rural, band and independent schools. Great partnerships are being formed with Heavy Metal Rocks and the RCMP Youth Academy. The district is starting to look at a Passion Project, where students submit a proposal, do the research, find a mentor and then present the project. My Blueprint was implemented for the Grad Transitions program. They are building more and more tools to be able to build a full portfolio. It would have been better to start it in grade 7.
- SD 83 North Okanagan-Shuswap – Reid Findley – Career Education updates include Design Thinking; Maker Training; Safe Tool Use; Industry partners; BearBots; Increased awareness for Indigenous students; Elementary Trades $200 school grants; Maker Carts in every school; Fender Blender projects; Innovation Centre opening; Maker Clubs at every school; Take Your Kid to Work Day and Trades Sampler Programs. The district uses My Blueprint and My-Eportfolio. A survey was sent out on the importance of Career Education with grades 9 to 12 students listing it a highly important. Salmon Arm has two campuses with shared students and staff making it a struggle with time tabling and fitting the course in. They are looking at having a seminar day every two weeks and having Career Coordinators doing experiential learning, field trips and distance learning partnerships.
- The district is proud of their partnerships with SCIP (Shuswap Construction Industry Professionals) and Construction Ready. The Hairstylist program is in the process of applying for Level 2 instruction.
The CES would like the region’s projects and ideas uploaded to the CES sharing site.
Assessment
SD73 reviewed their Applied Design, Skills and Technology Learning map when questions were asked about assessment. The Learning map is more of a large scale student growth plan and the framework goes over the Learning Standards for the whole course. The assessment is based on the Triangulation of Assessment (Observation, Conversation and Product). This map was completed collaborating with over 54 professionals. The district will be looking for groups of teams (K to grade three; grade four to seven and grade eight and nine) to create these learning maps for Career Education.
The meeting adjourned at 3:00 pm
Reminders:
- CES Annual Conference Every year, The Career Education Society of BC organizes and facilitates a conference for educators in the province. The CES Annual Conference is known as one of the best career education professional development conferences in the province.
The 2018 annual conference is set for November 19 and 20, 2018.
The 2018 conference will be held at the River Rock Resort, Richmond BC.
- Community of Practice web site http://ces.bc.ca/community-of-practice/
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