From Learning Enrichment Co-Ordinator Primary

.... Future Finders

I was fortunate enough to spend a day this week with our Year 6 Students at the Future Finders Day at the University of Wollongong Campus in Bega. It was a great experience for the students who had the opportunity to participate in hands on learning activities, such as engineering challenges and extracting DNA from bananas. As part of the program students are given the chance to investigate what types of opportunities there are for them after school and what types of careers they would like to pursue.

These events provide a wonderful opportunity for students to think big and imagine who they might be when they are older. Students learn that there are a wide variety of occupations and career paths that they might not have even heard of before, let alone contemplated. They are also encouraged to make the connection between the skills they learn at school and the skills that are required as an adult, and to understand they might not be as different as they imagine. Working as a team, leadership, communication, information technology, investigating, experimentation,research, digital media, cooperation, independence, responsibility and creativity are just some of the skills that are highly valued across a wide range of industries and occupations and are embedded across all of the work we do at Lumen. 

I believe that we should encourage children and young people to imagine the world around them as a place that they can go and share their talents and gifts, and that you are never too young to dream about what you would like to do when you get older. There is no guarantee that what the future holds is what you imagined you would be doing in grade two. As adults we are well aware that there are occupations now that didn’t exist when we were children, and the same will apply for our children. What is valuable, is for a child to be able to imagine a place for themselves in the future, a place where they are able to develop and share their special talents and abilities.