News From the Nest - December 12 - 16

Spotlight on Learning: Career - Life Education

Thank you to Ms Fillion for inviting us into her classroom this week.  She writes:

It’s the first day of school and as the latest CLE 10 students tumble into the portable, you can feel the room filling with anxiety.

“Why do we have to learn about careers?”

“I’m too young to know what I want to be when I grow up!”

“How am I supposed to know what career I want?”

“What if I don’t end up being what I pick right now?!”

And so, the learning process begins.  We talk a lot about how Career-Life Education is about much more than choosing a career:  career, education, finances, workplace safety, work-life balance, support networks, networking, life skills.  It goes on.  This is our chance to have an entire semester to explore our own needs, wants, likes, dislikes, societal pressures as well as all the resources and opportunities available to us in many areas.  This is PRACTICE.  We may not end up in this career or in this post secondary program, but we have identified many useful resources and learned how to navigate difficult websites to find the information we need to make solid choices in the future!   

Students focus on GROWTH MINDSET.  For many of the class activities, they brainstorm TAKEAWAYS that reflect big ideas relevant to their own journey.  And they do!  The most thoughtful, brilliant, open-minded takeaways.  It’s a beautiful thing.

We do a lot of deeper learning activities and have lots of fun, but here are a few class highlights! 

Daily Activities

Every class starts with a new activity.  On Movie Monday we watch a video from the WorkBC Career Trek website that explores a career that got the most votes in a survey students complete at the beginning of the semester.  It, along with our debrief, helps us learn about a typical day on the job as well as necessary skills, pay, hours, job demand and more. It doesn’t matter if this is not the choice of career for all the students.  On Typing Tuesday, we practice formal typing for fun!  Chatter High provides us with thoughtful Mental Health and Finance courses that the students complete on Wellness Wednesday and Taxation Thursday.  And then there is Fist Bump Friday, their favorite day where we sit in a circle and everyone speaks to one positive moment in their previous week.  It can be as small as hitting the Starbucks drive thru and nobody being there (my personal favorite!) or sometimes as huge as a loved one surviving a difficult surgery.

“I really love doing Fist Bump Friday because I really like listening to interesting stories people tell. It's also a way to get to know your classmates better.”  Roshan Fatima

Superhero Support Network

Everyone needs a Superhero Support Network!!  Students create a portfolio where they purposefully choose 10 different people in their lives and in some cases on social media who fulfill certain roles like their mentor, realist, or industry insider!  They also include two community resources accessible right here in Abbotsford as well as 2 other online resources of their choosing.

“Superhero support network gave me the ability to see who in my life I can rely on or talk to about my life and what I want to do in my future. I learned having a support network is key to being successful as you can learn from these people in your life and have first hand knowledge of what the world can be like.” Megan Froese

Guest Speaker Series

Our Guest Speaker Series has really brought Careers to life and relieved a lot of student anxiety. The list includes current District staff like Paul Gill, Astri Solgaard, and Todd Diakow talking about career programs and post secondary opportunities as well as other Mouat staff and former Mouat grads speaking to their varied and fascinating Career Journeys.  Students know who is coming and craft questions to share with their presenter in advance and to ask during the presentation. It doesn’t matter that these people don’t have the exact career the student wants. ALL of the Guest Speakers’ stories reinforce that finding a career is a JOURNEY.  There will likely be many twists and turns that come with having new opportunities and experiences as well as meeting new people!  It’s part of the process of finding your way and that’s OK.  Students place all of their thoughtful takeaways for each Guest Speaker in a learning journal and even added some of them to their Superhero Support Network!  Every guest speaker was impressed with how professional, mature, engaged and thoughtful the students were.

“I was surprised at how their journeys were not straight forward and it was a zig zag and they fought their way through it.” Logan Van Steinburg

My Career Path Oral Presentation

Students spend weeks researching a Career Plan A and a backup career plan including descriptions, hours, pay, job demand, job security and much more.  Next they research all levels of postsecondary education necessary to reach their career goals including any certification exams.  The final product?  A fantastic oral presentation where students not only confidently share their current career plan information, but they learn how to engage their audience through their enthusiasm, storytelling, and supporting visual design elements. No cue cards.  No papers.  No reading off the screen.  It’s amazing to watch.  I’m so proud of all of them for how much they grow in their critical thinking, creative thinking and communication skills over the course of this project.

“One of the things I enjoyed about My Career Path Oral Presentation is being able to have all the information so in the future, it will not be as much of a burden. With this, I know what courses I will have to take for this career. Helping me save money in the long run.” Kiran Udhian

There is SO much more to this course than I can include here, but I hope this gives everyone a better idea of the possibilities it offers Mouat students.

Abbotsford Police City Basketball Tournament

 The annual Abbotsford Police City Basketball tournament wrapped another successful year this weekend.  We saw Mouat teams perform well across the city and our school was the host site for the Junior Girls this year. Our grade 9 boys team won their first game with MEI but then fell two games to ACS and Hansen respectively and the junior boys team finished the tournament with a 1-2 record.  Our Junior girls had a very strong start again Hansen but fell to MEI in their second game and finished the tournament off on a win against SJB.  Our Senior girls played great basketball but lost to Abby Sr and a very close nail-biting game against ACS.  Our Senior boys made the final by pushing past Bateman in their first game and MEI in their second.  The final game was close but ultimately, we lost to Abby Sr.  Congratulations to all the student athletes that represented Mouat this week – you make us proud!

Student Community of Practice

 Seven of our grade 11 students met again on Friday with students and teachers from across the district to continue working on their student voice project.  The project kicked off at the end of October with an in-person meeting in Vancouver where students from each school collaboratively crafted driving questions to inform their work.  Students from Mouat decided to explore how assessment impacts their learning (assessment of learning and assessment for learning).  After the initial meeting, students were tasked with completing empathy interviews of their peers to gather street data and amplify the voice of all students within the school; the second meeting saw student present the findings from the interviews and develop next steps. Thank you for taking on this project students and we can’t wait to hear your suggestions and action plan in April!

Read the full version with pictures here: 15B-NFTN Dec 12 - 16 Families.pdf