Last week was another great week for your Year 10 students (wow, they’ve been busy lately!) as they went out into the community and got the chance to see a side of the “real world” that they haven’t necessarily seen before.
The opportunity that Work Experience Week offers for our students is one that I’ve not seen offered before, it’s a wonderfully unique experience that gives our students the chance to go beyond their comfort zone and begin thinking beyond Sekolah Ciputra. The preparation, the actual experience and the reflective process all help our students experience the world in a totally different way than we could offer from a classroom.
Beginning well in advance of Work Experience Week, our students began the planning and preparation needed to earn themselves a position working with a business or organization. They prepared job application letters, many of them went for actual interviews and they began thinking about what it would take to enter the workforce (if only for a week) and what it would mean to carry that responsibility. By the time the Work Experience Week finally arrived our students were excited and nervous, but ready for the opportunity in front of them.
With more than 50 businesses and organizations involved in hosting our Year 10 students this year, there was certainly no shortage of diversity in the experiences that our students received. Having opportunities at jobs with the Jawa Pos, any number of event organizers, or even just down the hall in the PYP, our students have been able to find something that is interesting, exciting and speaks to their own personal tastes. Work Experience Week has given our students a glimpse into the future and helped them learn a little more about what lies beyond the walls of our school.
My nudge this week is to you and your departments…How can we continue to inspire our students beyond the walls of the school? We’ve put a lot of time and effort into some amazing IDUs over the last couple of years but none of them require leaving the comfort zone of the school building. Is there a way to take an existing IDU and move beyond the walls? If not, are there new potential IDUs that could help us expose our kids to the culture and opportunities that lie beyond the comfort zone of our school? Perhaps you won’t act on this nudge this week but, in the future, when you’re working to plan IDUs or other engaging units, I’m asking you to think beyond our ‘bubble’ and get our kids out into the world!
“Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind.” – Rebecca Solnit
“Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.” – Barack Obama
Pushing Forward 