The Necessity of a Well-Taught Careers Class

This might not be a universal experience, but I really disliked careers class when I was younger. I don’t necessarily enjoy it now, but I can understand the importance and so I put up with it. The class is one that ideally should be teaching us how to write a resume, what career paths are available, or what an undergrad program is. I don't know about everyone else, but the only thing I’ve gotten out of past classes are what the core competencies are. As we progress through school, we have to start thinking more and more about what we want to do when we get older. I, for one, would love it if I learned what careers I could go into from a certain major in university. Right now, I have to either ask these questions myself or I have to do my own research. While this isn’t necessarily bad, I think there should be more useful things being taught in the curriculum. This also isn't the fault of the teachers, because you can't just expect someone who went to university for science to remember their days in high school and teach a bunch of high school students about university applications. Why even bother to make it a class if we only do it once a week and fill time?

If we have to take a careers class, the school board needs to make the curriculum actually useful. When I applied for my first job, I had to google how to write a resume because I was never taught. This is absolutely something that needs to be taught, because everybody will need to write a resume at least once in their lives. I shouldn’t have to hope that a teacher will give me the information that I need, and I also shouldn’t have to google what an undergraduate program is because somebody just assumed I knew. We need to be taught things that are actually useful in life. I’m not saying that youth philanthropy isn’t important, or that we shouldn’t learn about the core competencies, but we need to balance what we’re learning.

Something that warrants its own whole paragraph is the capstone project. I may just be a massive nerd, but I would like to know at least some criteria about the project that I literally need to graduate. I’m in grade 11, but I feel like by now they should have told me something about this mythical project that I have to have finished by next year. Is it just my MAP? Is it a passion project? Who knows. I don’t even know if this is something that universities will look at or not. My only hope is that I’ll get told something when I’m in grade 12, but I doubt I will. It’s actually stressing me out a bit, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

A large part of the problem is the people who have to teach these classes. A teacher who majored in history should not have to teach a class about careers. That's like making an english teacher teach a science class; we would learn a little bit but they would be way out of their depth because that's not the subject they were trained to teach. We should have teachers that are specifically trained in the subject teach these classes. It’s not fair to the students or the teachers to make them take and teach these classes. I promise you that I can google things just as well as my foods teacher that is trying to teach a careers class can.

Would it work to try and teach any other class for 81 minutes once a week? I sincerely doubt it. Half the reason our careers classes are so lacking is because we have a fraction of the time in those classes than we do in any other. I agree that we need more time for academic subjects, but why even bother to have a class if that's all the time we have to do it. I honestly don’t see the point in a class that is so irregular. I would sacrifice one of my electives to have a decent careers class because I feel like it would help me way more in the long run to have an education in that area then to take another class that I don’t really need to take.

It's probably quite obvious that I have very strong feelings about this class. I just really like to be prepared and I don’t feel prepared enough, thanks partially to the frankly horrifying curriculum for this subject. It’s not everyone's favourite class, and that's fine, but knowing what your options are is important information. Lots of people close doors for themselves because they don’t take classes they need to have and they were never told how to find the prerequisites they need. Some people don’t even know what prerequisites are. The school board did a survey at the end of the last school year (June 2022) about how we could change our careers classes, and I think that part of the reason we aren’t seeing as much positive change is because people didn’t respond to the survey. A lot of students don’t care at all about this until they realise how imperative it is to know. I don’t know if writing this is going to do anything to help, but we can all make a difference by raising the concern with our teachers or just actually showing up to CLE/CLC classes (I know a lot of people struggle with the attendance aspect of this subject). I really hope that in the future, careers classes can be actually helpful and other students won’t have to teach themselves about things we should all be getting taught.