Guidance & Career Education

What is Guidance and Career Education?

The Guidance and Career Education Program enables all students to achieve personal goals and to make a positive contribution to the community. It places the total school and community experiences of students in a context that demonstrates the relevance and connectedness of their learning.

The Guidance and Career Education Program achieves this by focusing on the learner, interpersonal/citizenship and career development needs of all students. Specifically, it helps students to:

• Set and achieve learning goals both in and out of school, monitor their own learning and become self-directed learners.

• Understand and take control of their behavior, choose ways of interacting positively with others and take action to address societal needs.

• Make informed and appropriate choices and implement plans for successful transitions from high school to educational, work and life roles

Why is it important?

Students live in a rapidly changing world. They must build the capacities required to adapt to the changing nature of work, to adapt to technological complexity, to manage information systems, to understand evolving national identities and to respond to challenges to moral certainties. The program is designed to anticipate and respond to the developing needs of the learner and the diversity of communities and global trends.

How is the program delivered?

The Guidance and Career Education Program is delivered in the following ways:

Instruction:

• courses
• workshops
• simulations

• integrated units
• guest speakers
• overlay units

• small groups

• field trips
• Job Shadowing

• work experience
• volunteer work

• co-operative education

• small group

• individual

• referral to Peel Board and community support services

All Grade 9 students are encouraged to participate in a job shadowing day called "Take Our Kids To Work". Students may accompany parents, relatives or other adults to a work site in order to explore the challenges and opportunities of the modern workplace

All students are encouraged to do volunteer work; it is an effective career exploration strategy and a way of making a valuable contribution to the community. Students interested in volunteering should plan to attend the Community Agencies Display organized by TFSS co-operative education students.

How is the program structured?

The Guidance & Career Education Program is an ongoing personal inquiry focusing on eight central questions organized around four themes. It involves three stages of inquiry.

In helping students answer the eight central questions of the inquiry, the program develops in students the skills, knowledge and values necessary for further learner development, interpersonal/citizenship development and career development.

Career planning is a lifelong process. Therefore, the questions are never fully answered; we return to them throughout life and our answers change as we and the world around us changes. Accordingly, the Guidance and Career Education Program addresses each question every year, but the emphasis of the inquiry shifts from exploration in years 1 and 2 to synthesis and application in years 3 and 4.

The model below shows the development of the program and how elements of the program relate to each other.

GUIDANCE AND CAREER EDUCATION: AN INQUIRY