What do you want to be when you grow up?
Whether it’s a carpenter, a computer programmer, a doctor or a pilot, students in Grades 5 to 9 will get a chance to try them out at the upcoming Find Your Fit event on Tuesday, Oct. 8 at Kent Elementary.
Heading to the Fraser-Cascade school district for the second year, WorkBC’s interactive career event invites students to try out a number of different job opportunities and find what kind of work might excite them in the future.
“There’s hundreds of career paths, but we always think of the mainstream five,” Karl Koslowsky, vice-principal of the district trades program and Hope Secondary, said, adding that different families may have different ideas of what the “mainstream five” are.
“The idea is just to start with career awareness, and then go to exposure and hands-on activities,” he continued. “I think it’s just a very unique … way of connecting younger students with what type of opportunities are out there.”
Find Your Fit is different from a traditional career fair in that much of the emphasis is on hands-on learning.
Last year, when the event came to AESS and Coquihalla Elementary, students got a chance to try out a flight simulator, operate a 3D printer and explore careers in heavy duty mechanics and medicine. This year, according to WorkBC’s promotional poster, the event will include activities in welding, carpentry, accounting and more.
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“They put on a good program no matter what they bring, because it’s engaging,” Koslowsky said. “It has a wide scope — it’s not just focused only on the trades. It demonstrates a diversity of career paths out there.”
On Tuesday, Oct. 8, students in Grades 5 to 9 will be given a chance to check out Find Your Fit with their class between 8:25 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. Although the event is taking place at Kent Elementary, classes from across the district will be attending, with students being bused out from Hope.
(Boston Bar Elementary will be getting its own, smaller version of Find Your Fit on Oct. 10.)
From 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., the public will also get a chance to visit the interactive career fair.
“By all means, come in the evening and take a look,” Koslowsky said. “The hope is that kids will bring their parents, their guardians back … so they can show them which ones they liked, or go see the ones they didn’t get a chance to.”
grace.kennedy@ahobserver.com
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