For the past two weeks ASLP students from grades 10 and 11 have participated in a Job Shadowing event organized by our college counselors. Job Shadowing is a career-exploration activity for Upper School students to help them determine a career path to follow. It provides work experience option where students learn about a job by walking through the work day as a shadow to a competent worker. The job shadowing work experience is a temporary, unpaid exposure to the workplace in an occupational area of interest to the student.
Our students therefore spent from 1-3 days observing professionals such as lawyers, doctors, engineers, hotel managers, dentists, chefs and business associates. The students returned enthusiastic, happy and with many stories to share. One student for example attended a trial as part of his experience. Another group of students were able to change the display on a showcase of a shop or even attend customers. Others had the opportunity of helping a chef bake cakes while two students were taken and shown behind the scenes of a hotel. All students commented on having learned many new things.
This experience will help the students make important decisions in the future especially when applying to university. However, the Job Shadowing experience does not end here, once finished, the students will have to do a project on one of the places they visited. The project will include a SWOT analysis and a list of suggestions for improvement.
We would also like to take this time to thank the many parents from ASLP and businesses who allowed our students to spend some time with them in their business. We appreciate that these parents not only dedicated many hours to our students but that they also carefully explained their professions in an understanding and thoughtful way.
