City LLEN News
Mock Interview Week – St Aloysius Girls College
Spread over an entire week the City LLEN and our partners attended our local girls Catholic college each day to support the students gain interview skills. Many of our interview sessions become careers conversations, providing an independent adult, who is a stranger to the student is often a valuable sounding board for students to explore their options away from parental expectations and pre-conceived ideas about what they may or may not be suitable for. These interviews also provide the LLEN staff with valuable opportunities to learn of trends in student aspirations and any issues that may be concerned about to further inform our work with young people.
We would like to extend a big thank you to all our partners who gave up their time to support this initiative: Dianne Bloom - Victoria Police, Annabel Mounsey - Centre for Adult Education, Eileen Nichols - BHI Skills and Jobs Centre, Michael Ball - Kangan Institute, Anyaak Abiel - Drummond Street Services, Alex Lloyd - William Angliss Institute, Nicole Schuler - RMIT, Ruth Game - North Melbourne Football Club, Carol Mc Caskie - BHI, Melinda Davis - BHI, Candice Wright - RMIT Skills and Jobs Centre, Cherie Ward - RMIT and Nidhi Kapuria of BHI.
Flexi Schools Network
Following our highly successful Schools Slam sports day for students attending alternative schools in the City of Melbourne, teachers and support staff reconvened for our network meeting held at the Victorian College for the Deaf (VCD). VCD have a café facility that enables VCAL students to gain hospitality skills and interact with the hearing community to help grow their confidence dealing with strangers as well as gain valuable skills that contribute toward their VET certificate course programs. During the last meeting we were joined by Kylie Witt of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority who spoke about her role developing contemporary careers resources for teachers to use across year levels and mapped to all subjects in the curriculum. Members expressed their needs and ideas for her to take back to further support their teaching.
A fantastic and enjoyable activity during our meeting included all the members learning how to sign that they would like a coffee and what type they wanted with the help of a deaf student and Auslan interpreter, this was a great opportunity for our members to gain further insight into the challenges faced by deaf students.
St Joseph’s Flexible Learning Centre
To support Year 10 student career pathways and capacity to gain that all important first part time job whilst still at secondary school, the LLEN worked with teachers to identify and develop potential additional programs and VET training opportunities. To enhance student prospects a short training program was organised by the LLEN and delivered by the Institute of Training and Further Education to provide students with qualifications in the Responsible Serving of Alcohol. It was great to see how engaged the students were in learning about the effects of alcohol and the various ways to decline requests for more drinks, the trainer did an excellent job engaging the students and we would like to thank them for their great work.
Drummond Street Services
We have been collaborating with Youth Service workers of the Drum to support the learning and engagement of at risk students residing in Carlton Public Housing and attending local schools. This has involved identifying the educational needs and supports of the students and organising a range of supports to help these students, we look forward to hearing what the impact has been of these interventions.
Youth Pathways Framework
Led by the Huddle (the community arm of the North Melbourne Football Club), the LLEN together with a range of other local organisations have been collaborating on the development of a framework to support the pathways and engagement of African- Australian young people. This work has included several community forums with young African Australians as well as meetings with partners to identify practical strategies to support the social and economic outcomes of this cohort of young people.
Gray Poehnell – Young People: Learning and the Power of Possibility
Organised by the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, LLEN staff had the pleasure of attending a PD session with Gray Poehnell. Gray is a Canadian aboriginal, widely lauded as world leader in the careers field as providing best practice methods for engaging at risk young people in careers conversations. Drawing on his immense experience we worked through the strategies of ‘Hope filled Engagement” which we will be able to incorporate into all of our dealings with the young people we work with.
Rive Nile School (RNS) Inaugural Art Show
Last night the LLEN Staff had the pleasure of attending the RNS first student art exhibition. Held at the Ample Café in North Melbourne it was terrific to see so many proud young women from the African-Australian community, their parents and friends together with staff from the school exhibit their work and explain their inspiration to other visitors. Creativity is an important skill and when it is combined with fostering pride in your origins can be a powerful method of supporting the emotional well-being of students.
SWL Update
This year the City LLEN surpassed their placement targets provided by the Department of Education and Training, thank you to Wendy Dalkiran our schools, students and employers, we hope to have another bumper year next year. In the mean time Wendy has been busy organising meetings with our schools and employers to plan for next year, we are always on the look out for trends in student preferences and feedback from careers teachers or year level coordinators on what they are hearing from students about anything to do with course preferences, careers ideas and so on so we can best plan our activities next year.
Don’t forget to check out the portal and start thinking about placements for next year.