Students at Hope Secondary have earned their school $750 in the University of the Fraser Valley’s first-ever ChatterHigh competition.
UFV recently partnered with ChatterHigh, a newly created website designed with one primary focus — to help students learn more about the post-secondary options available in B.C. Students in the five Fraser Valley school districts were invited to participate on the ChatterHigh website by answering quiz questions and earning points for correct answers. Rick Hansen students in Abbotsford took home first place and a cheque for $1,250. Hope Secondary earned second place and $750, while Chilliwack Secondary received $500 for its third-place finish.
“The goal was to have students educate themselves on the various career opportunities or post secondary programs available to them that they may never have considered or know anything about,” said HSS teacher Brad Unger. “I think today more than ever, there are so many different jobs available. Students in Grade 10 don’t need to know what they want to do, but a big part of my goal as a planning teacher is helping them gather information on different things they could do. It gets them thinking about their future if nothing else. So many times we see students work medial jobs through college earning credits for a direction they’re not even sure about.”
Unger gave his students 15 minutes at the start of each class to do the online informational quiz. Questions included everything from “What is the UFV mascot?” to “Name one program based on the Chilliwack campus.” If students weren’t sure of an answer they had the option to click on a link directing them to a specific area of the UFV website. Students could do one quiz per day to earn points for their school.
“We all learned about many interesting and obscure careers out there and post secondary programs to support them,” said Unger. “Some of (the winnings) went to a pizza party as reward for their enthusiastic involvement. There is around $600 left and I plan to bring in guest speakers from industries or maybe take a field trip somewhere.”
The competition was open from October to November, but cheques were only recently presented to the winners.