Materials: Pencil, paper for mentors to write down responses from students, and optional Flip Chart paper for lists.
Instructions:
1. Introduce all mentors present. After introductions, explain to the student’s that today’s activity is all about dream jobs and career exploration!
2. Icebreaker: For the first 10min of the visit, have the class stand in a circle or ask students to stand at their desk with mentors scattered among the students. Each student and mentor will take 30 seconds to 1 minute to say their name and act out their dream job, while the rest of the class guesses. After their time is up, if no one was able to guess the job, have the student say what their dream job they were acting out is. A mentor will write down what each dream job is.
- -If a student isn’t comfortable acting out their dream job, they can either describe it out loud, have a mentor act it out for them, or draw it.
3. After the icebreaker is complete and one of the mentors has written down all the students’ dream jobs, break up the class into small groups of 4 to 6 students and pair each group with a mentor.
4. What Makes a Job: Once the groups are formed, the mentor in each group will be given one of the answers from the icebreaker. Once they are given the job, each small group will work together (for 5-10min) to list at least 10 skills or knowledge a person doing that job needs to have to be successful. Either a student in the group or the mentor will designate a recorder to record the list. After the time is up, go around the class and have one or two students in each group present the job and what they thought was needed for the job to be performed successfully.
- Ask students to note if any skills or knowledge was repeated in different jobs. Why could this be? What does that mean? Explain how these could be referred as “Essential Employability Skills” or “Transferable Skills.”
5. What Job Am I?: This part of the lesson is similar to the game 20 Questions. Students should stay in the same groups with the mentors positioned around the classroom. Students in their groups will start with one mentor and ask the mentor a series of questions to guess what job the mentor has. The mentor should keep track of how many questions the students ask before guessing correctly, keeping it to no more than 20 questions.
- – The mentor can either be the job they have now at their organization or can be what their dream job was when they were a kid. Depending on the age of the class, keep the jobs more simple i.e. Lawyer, Doctor, Teacher, Engineer, Sales, IT, etc.
6. After all student groups correctly guess the mentor’s job, have the group rotate to the next mentor repeating the process until all mentors’ jobs have been guessed. This process should take about 20-25min or so (5 min per rotation). Once all groups have visited each mentor, have students return to their seats.
6. End the lesson by acknowledging accomplishments from each group (guessing the job with the fewest questions, asking good questions, etc.). Ask the students what they learned about career exploration, if they’re excited about their future job, if they learned about a new job, etc.
- – This is a great opportunity to pass out snack.
Tips: Encourage students to think creatively about the skills and knowledge needed to do certain jobs. When doing the 20 Questions portion of the lesson, have the mentors either use what their job is at your organization or what their dream job was when they were a kid.
