Partnerships and Pathways

Year 10 students had a fantastic opportunity to get a glimpse into their futures when they met a huge range of exhibitors at the Greater Western Sydney Careers Market last week, to discover and explore their post school pathways. Our students engaged with universities and training organisations, apprenticeship centres, private colleges, professional associations and employers, enabling them to find out what they need to know and assist with career and pathways planning.

Our Lunch and Learn series continues to feature a diverse and interesting range of guests in the last fortnight, including our university showcase presentations from ACU and UTS - with Wollongong, Macquarie, Sydney, Notre Dame and UNSW to follow. A panel of speakers from Seymour Whyte visited last week, including some of our Chisholm alumni, generously sharing their career stories in workplace safety, environmental sustainability, project management, traffic management and project engineering. Students found out about other facets of employment with Seymour Whyte such as the wide range of roles and pathways for women, the importance of building transferable skills, what a 'typical' day in each role is like and the value placed on work-life balance, wellbeing, diversity and inclusion. 

Our wellbeing lessons in homeroom are currently featuring the Careers Clusters - a tool developed by Study Work Grow. Career Clusters give students a new way to talk and think about the world of work and what they may want to do when they leave school. Career Clusters encourage students to look at work not as particular jobs in certain industries, but as groups or 'clusters' of people who share similar work environments, complete similar tasks, need similar skills, and achieve similar goals. This tool can be used to make better career choices that reflect students’ unique skills and strengths. Students can re-attempt the quiz at any time by clicking here. Like any career assessment tool, their results are just a starting point to the thousands of careers available. Students know themselves better than any quiz possibly could and so if they want to further unpack their results or what they mean, they can have a chat with us. 

Year 12 students will also be taking time in their upcoming Wellbeing lessons to continue working on their Post School Plans using the resources of Study Work Grow. These personalised plans focus on strengths, skills, interests and motivations as well as a scaffolded process to develop pathway goals and actions. Once they've finished their Post School Plans, our Year 12s will hopefully have a clearer idea about which pathways they want to follow when they graduate, and feel confident with their decisions. Year 12s are always welcome to meet with us to chat about their post school plans at any time. 

Students can keep up to date with all our careers news and resources - including Careers at Canvas, the Ponder Pathways Hub and Beyond. 

To book a coaching conversation, or for any pathways enquiries, students can pop into the library or email us: amacnamara1@parra.catholic.edu.auand  koliver4@parra.catholic.edu.au

Mr Adam MacNamara

Partnerships and Pathways