I'm Planning My Future

In high school, the students have a difficult task, to choose a career that will mostly last a lifetime, that decision will affect them for a long time if not their whole life. According to vocational theories and career counselors, the students must have proper training and a very good understanding of the career they want to follow in order to make the right decisions. Between 11 and 15 years old when they are in secondary school is the perfect age to start talking about career training and provide job skills. Therefore, it is very important for the parents and teachers to make sure the proper job training and career orientation are given to the students and at the right time, to help them make the proper choices.Considering the fact mentioned above, the principal objective of the project “I’m Planning My Future” was to teach secondary school students all they need to know about jobs such as salary, working conditions, working hours, prestige, required skills, training, qualifications and so on before they go to high school so that they could choose their ideal occupations in the future. In other words, we aimed to transform the students of today into the workers of tomorrow and keep them happy throughout their lives.In order to reach this fundamental objective, students participated in numerous activities like making research about various jobs, jobs for the disabled people, jobs that are gender specific, extincted jobs in their country, jobs that are popular in their country, preparing a job interview, drawing the future jobs, designing a logo for the project and making interviews with diverse employees. Our students designed and created magazines, e-books, songs and videos for these activities. The products created during project time were uploaded to YouTube channel, project website and distributed to local community and institutions for dissemination. Besides, the fundamental objective we mentioned above, the students were involved in a series of interactive and enjoyable activities which gave important resultssuch as:Building self-awareness: They worked with counselors, attended various activities and answered questionnaires in order to discover their talents, interests, strengths, and weaknesses. Entrepreneur skills: They attended a seminar with an expert on entrepreneurship during the Portugal visit which will help them tremendously in looking for jobs or build their own business in the future.Building computing skills: Students received the proper education on IT tools that was necessary and used them throughout the project, such as magazines, videos, and making digital booklets. Raising cultural awareness: Students and teachers from five different countries paticipated in numerous activities. Individuals had the chance to learn about different cultures, traditions, lifestyles and languages. As they interacted with one another they became more tolerated and learned to respect differences.Gaining different skills: The students had various activities to help them build crucial skills such as problem-solving, sense of innovation, self-discipline, leadership, research skills, imagination, critical thinking, self- confidence, language skills which are vital for 21st Century labour market.Over the past two years, five secondary schools across Europe collaborated in this project which are: Merkez Ortaokulu- Turkey (coordinator), Jaunpiebalgas Vidusskola- Latvia, Osnovno uchilishte Panayot Volov-Bulgaria, Scoala Gimnaziala nr. 1 Virfu-Cimpului-Romania and Agrupamento de Escolas Virgínia Moura- Portugal. The students who participated in the project activities were aged between 11 and 15