Display – National Careers Week
National Careers Week is celebrated in Australia in the second week of May. This year our school has a new Careers Guidance Counsellor (who is awesome) and she approached me about celebrating National Careers Week in the library. What a fantastic opportunity to connect literature and the skills we learn in the library to the workforce and students’ futures. Working together, we created a range of displays and activities to engage the students, from Junior right through to Senior, in discussing careers.
Before I Was A Teacher, I Was a…
This display was the standout hit. It was a simple idea and we threw this together pretty quickly. We asked teachers (and all school staff members) what careers they might have had before coming to work at a school. I put the previous career titles on the front of a folded piece of card and the teacher’s image and name inside, so students can lift the flap to discover who had previously worked as a clown, lifeguard, daffodil bulb picker (I kid you not), scientist or copy writer. The responses were quick and varied. This display was so much fun to put together, totally surprising and a huge hit with students, staff members and parents alike.
Activities and Competitions
We organised a range of activities and competitions for students to engage in throughout the week. These included colouring in and job search picture, writing a letter to their future selves, employment skill boardgames and drawing a picture of their future career.
Photo booth
What’s a celebration without a photo booth. Using an iPad (with the Photo booth app launched and locked in guided access) and a simple backdrop, students could write their future career on a mini whiteboard and pose in the photo booth. Next year we are adding props!
Book display
Our library has an awesome collection of career-related titles and books that span the many careers and employment areas available. STEAM areas and books on coding, engineering and design were particularly popular, but as our teacher jobs display proved, even the book on life as a clown might have been useful reading.
We’re interested in doing something like this in our middle school library. Can you please give more details about the activities you had in the library and the competition you mention? Thanks.
Hi, I think the activities we got were found on the National Career Week website. There are a few websites from around the world, so check them out for activity ideas and downloads, word searches and the like. We also had students create a drawing of what they wanted their future career to be. We had guest speakers for the older students, just professionals from different careers. I honestly don’t remember what was a competition. Maybe trying to guess which teacher has a previous job doing something and they had to work it out from the display or submitting their future career drawings. In my current school we have a fingerprint forensic scientist expert, so ran some session on solving crimes. Professional musician tips for making that a career was also a popular session.