Resiliency on the Career Path

Summary

• Students identify why resilience is important for school, life, and work
• Students identify instances where people have encountered challenges in their career pathway and ways the people overcame the challenges
• Students reflect on the career/life plan they have started, how it reflects their personal challenges, and what they learned from reading about real professionals

Setting the Stage

Merriam-Webster defines resilience as “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Being resilient in one’s career means having the ability to adjust to career changes, whatever they may be. Career resilience helps us to navigate the ups, downs, twists and unexpected turns on our career paths. Being resilient also helps us to adapt and recover from stressful situations, such as transitioning into, or out of, the workforce or from one job to another. Being resilient doesn’t mean avoiding stressful situations. What it means is having strategies to cope better and recover from stress more easily. 

Luckily, resilience isn’t a fixed trait that you are born with. Anyone can learn to become resilient at any time in their life. 

In this lesson, students will read career profiles on the Let’s Talk Science career resource website from professionals who followed various pathways and reflect on the various decisions these professionals have made and the struggles they may have encountered on their path to their career.

Materials & Preparation

• Computers or tablets with internet access (1 per pair or small group)
• Access to career profiles from the Let’s Talk Science career resource either online or printed by the teacher
• Exploring Resiliency on the Career Path Reproducible [Google doc] [Word doc] [PDF] - provide as a paper or e-copy, 1 per pair or small group.
• Resiliency on the Career Path: Reflection Reproducible [Google doc] [Word doc] [PDF] - provide as a paper or e-copy, 1 per student.

What To Do

• Teachers could begin the lesson with a discussion about roadblocks that may be encountered on a person’s career/life journey. Guiding questions include:
  • What are some goals you have set and achieved?
  • Were there any roadblocks you encountered?
  • How did you overcome them?
  • What are some possible things that could keep you from achieving your future goals?
• Following the discussion, teachers should direct students to the Let’s Talk Science career resource and explain that the class will be looking at the career paths of real professionals, and learning about some of the roadblocks they came across, and how they found their way to success.
• Teachers should provide pairs or small groups of students with a copy of the Exploring Resiliency in a Career Path Reproducible. Teachers should review the categories to ensure student understanding of the task.

Teachers can provide the following instructions to navigate the Let’s Talk Science career resource:

Click the top left drop down menu titled, “Education Pathway”. 

Select “High School/Direct to Work”.

Scroll through profiles and randomly click on profiles, or profiles with job titles that seem interesting, to view.

Choose one person who has had challenges on their career path. Career paths can be viewed by clicking on the “My career path is” button on the left hand side.

Repeat the same steps with all the Educational Pathways (Apprenticeship; Workplace Training; College/Technical; University).

• Alternatively, teachers could assign students profiles from the following list of individuals with easily recognized career challenges:

• To conclude the lesson, teachers can ask for student volunteers to share the information they gathered about one of the professionals they profiled.
• Teachers can also lead a group discussion about the takeaways from this lesson. Guiding questions could include:
  • Were any of these career pathways familiar to you?
  • What sort of roadblocks did people encounter?
  • Would you have made similar decisions if you were on a similar career path? Why or why not?
  • Other than the job you want, what are some considerations you need to make for your future (eg. Personal life, mental and physical health, where you want to live, etc)? Teachers can explain that there will be a lot of decisions that come up in their life, and it is important to be resilient along the way if things don’t go exactly to plan.
  • Why is it so important to create balance in your life, now and in the future?
  • What are some strategies you use to help create balance in your lives?

Let’s Talk Science appreciates the work and contributions of Laura Ball from the Peel District School Board in the development of this lesson.