• It offered students a glimpse into the world of work to facilitate informed decisions
Image: COURTESY
Crawford International School held their first-ever virtual Careers Week with the theme ‘Starting My Tomorrow Today’, a rallying call to students to start thinking about their career paths now.
Students as young as kindergarten (KG) quickly got into the fun and dressed up in outfits depicting careers of their choice. Some children even went an extra mile to find appropriate tools of trade, such as baking pans, models of houses, stethoscopes and binoculars.
With the assistance of their parents, each child took a photo and a video, which were shared with their teachers and classmates. The variety of career choices was amazing. The list included doctors, architects, professional soccer players, artists, musicians, police officers, pilots, ballerinas, deejays, lawyers, teachers, dancers and criminal investigators.
Nicole Matheka, a Year 4 student, wants to be a family doctor. Dressed in a white coat and with a stethoscope around her neck, she sent a picture of herself listening to the chest of a younger sibling, with bottles of medicine on the table next to her.
Also clad in a bright orange overall, holding a drill and a rolled ‘house plan’, Maria Kimani in Year 8 posed next to a construction building. Her choice of career is engineering. While Ashley Nginya in Year 5 modelled her favourite outfit as she’d like to be a fashion designer.
Lucy Simiyu, a teacher at the school, said, “Careers Week is designed to engage all our children right from KG to Year 11. It was very exciting to see both students and parents got into the fun of it, and we believe this will assist them to make more informed decisions in future.
“During Careers Week, we offer students a glimpse into the world of work to help them make informed decisions about their careers of interest. To complete the whole experience, we also invited guest speakers online to talk about different professions.”
This is part of the Crawford ethos to help students make informed choices on the IGCSE subjects, which will guide their subsequent areas of study in higher education for a carefully planned career path.
One of the guest speakers was Rosemary Mburu, the executive director of Waci Health, an international NGO advocating healthy communities. She explained to the students what she studied after graduating high school and what skills it takes to do her job.
She said, “Advocacy is a process that involves persuading people and governments to see your point of view. You need to have good interpersonal skills, an interest in listening to people and a lot of patience.”
“Some people take longer than others to find their calling, so do not be discouraged if you do not know today exactly what you want to be in the future. I studied Education then did a Master's degree in Business Administration before going back to study Public Health, where I found my passion.”
Rosemary’s final advice to the students is that, “Learning is a lifelong process. The world is constantly changing, so you have to keep learning new skills and be open to new ideas.”