By Ben Oroko
Most people spend almost a half a century working for a living. However, some work until they drop. Just imagine how one feels to spend the whole time doing something they dislike or even hate altogether. That is where career work comes in handy.
It is critical to note that, good career education and guidance can give young people a stepping stone to advance their future careers by providing them with basic knowledge and skills they require to begin navigating their way successfully through career choices and changes.
Successful transitions, whether from lower secondary to upper secondary, all through into work-based training or university and ultimately into the labour market, are life-enhancing for individuals and critical to the learner’s future social and economic well-being.
These transitions also serve as an indicator of a good school. Career education and guidance (CEG) should therefore be something at the heart of any school’s personal development programme and all teachers have a role in securing successful transitions for their students.
It must be brought to the attention of all school career guidance teachers that this responsibility is not meant to turn them into specialist career advisors, but purely aims to give them the competence and confidence to provide their students with informed decisions on their future career choices.
Before I delve into this very critical conversation, I must pose a basic question: What is a career? A career is a person’s pathway through learning and work.
Planning that journey should start in earnest at secondary school-when students have to make subject and course choices. They need to make choices that reflect their interests and strengths, while making sure they don’t close any doors to possible future pathways.
Under such demanding circumstances, students will need their teachers’ assistance and help, either through formal career lessons or one-on-one guidance interviews, among other professionally proven career education and guidance parameters.
It is crucial for young people to have high-quality and impartial information and guidance to get the most out of their learning, to enable them enjoy successful progression from one stage to another and to inform the important choices that young people make pertaining their future life and work-related careers.
It is equally important to understand that, Career Education and Guidance is part of the school’s self-evaluation of how it helps students achieve economic well-being. However, some of the evidence for achieving that outcome is how well schools or learning institutions for that matter, prepare their learners for working life.
CEG also helps achieve the outcome of making a positive contribution where young people are helped to manage changes and respond to challenges in their lives.
A young person’s life inside and outside school needs to include opportunities that enhance their personal development and the chance to explore activities that extend their interests. You need to be aware of these wider opportunities and to encourage students to participate towards that direction.
Above all, the information, advice and guidance career teachers offer to their students must be impartial and independent, since a teacher’s prime purpose is to help the student to progress further along his/her own pathway of lifelong learning.
The writer is Communication Practitioner and Correspondent based in Kisii.
