Prairie South School Division’s annual Career Day gives students a chance to be hands-on with the many employment fields in Saskatchewan, with those experiences also encouraging some students to reconsider their future aspirations.
More than 1,200 high school youths visited the Moose Jaw Exhibition Grounds’ Convention Centre on April 30 to see what is available in Moose Jaw and Saskatchewan.
From carpentry to the military to health care to welding to hairstyling and everything in between, students learned more about a field and, in some cases, became hands-on with equipment or technology.
Kimberley Hebert, a Grade 9 student from LaFleche, thought the day was fun and said she learned about the many opportunities that exist for a potential career.
“I think I might (want to) be a nurse … because it seems fun and I want to help people,” she said. “It’s kind of my thing.”
The Saskatchewan Health Authority had several booths displaying various job fields, but it was the home care table that caught Hebert’s attention and made her realize that could be something she could do after graduation.
Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s Agriculture and Food Production booth attracted Gravelbourg’s Samantha Blohm as she inspected more than a dozen small containers filled with various types of growing seeds.
“I grew up doing it (planting seeds) with my family and it’s just something I hope to continue doing for the farm and be useful for them,” she said.
The booth featured a game where visitors had to match the seed containers with their names on a sheet. With a laugh, Blohm said “it was a lot of pressure” to do that because she couldn’t remember what all the seeds looked like — one of the table’s instructors gave her a few hints — and it is different on the farm because seed names are written on containers.
“I do different types of seeds (while) they (the booth) showed different types of peas than what we usually do, so it was just … remembering the shape and all that stuff,” Blohm said.
Overall, the Grade 11 thought the career fair was interesting and motivational because it showed her what other employment options existed and she learned what other workers have done to achieve their goals.
With a hammer in hand, Tuckyr Shpaiuk from Vanier Collegiate pounded letters into a metal dog tag using thin, needle-like steel punches at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 296 booth. Afterward, he said it was important to attend the expo so he could learn about what opportunities existed after he graduated this year.
“Lots of new ideas, for sure. (I) never thought I’d be looking at sheet metal, but I am now,” he said. “I always kind of thought I would be a welder, but now that I’m looking at all these things (sheet metal items), I don’t know. It’s definitely changed my perspective a little bit.”
Jeff Feeley, a career guidance counsellor with Prairie South, said the fair enabled students to do hands-on activities so they could determine whether they liked that industry, trade or field. Since some vendors couldn’t bring in equipment — like planes or welding machines — because of space constraints, they instead offered virtual reality headsets with hand-held joysticks.
One big change Feeley has noticed over the past 20 years is companies and post-secondary institutions now have quality websites with plenty of information about their services and programs. Not only does this help the students, but it also helps people like him.
“I used to carry around 500 pounds of books and preview books and flyers and paper handouts. I don’t do any of that anymore,” he said. “If it’s on the internet, I can carry it on a computer and I don’t have to haul my body weight in stuff.
“So, it’s really nice to have things on the tip of your finger.”
