A burgeoning superstar being tutored by a gentleman in a plaid shirt who needs to do a better job of knowing when the camera's on him...

Last week I was lucky enough to work with Sarah Maitland and the Kidsafe Writers’ Room team to create and deliver some superawesome – and super educational – literacy programming for kids from East Vancouver during their Winter Holiday Break. The program content was career-related – Wait, where are you going? No, trust me, it was fun and not serious at all and you will enjoy reading this!- and it was absolutely inspiring to work with over 160 kids as they invented their jobs of the future.

Fun fact: a student who enrolled in college or university in September 2011 will probably work in a job that does not exist today. For this reason, I often encourage post-secondary students who I meet to imagine and/or create future work that will address future challenges/opportunities and to consider the skills that will be needed to tackle this kind of work. It’s not my idea, but one that stems from guru/personal-hero, Jim Bright, who teaches the aptly-named Chaos Theory of Careers to students, practitioners and job seekers the world-over.

Needless to say, I was extremely curious and very excited to see how the kids, who ranged in age from five to fifteen, treated this exercise. For starters, here is a selection of some of the job titles that were created:

• Teacher
• Space Cooker
• Cleaner
• Driver
• The World Helpers (there was a “Kids with Problems” helper, an Animal Helper, and a Health Helper)
• Sky Welder
• Inventor
• Physicist
• Super Spy
• Star Gatherer
• Owner of a Petting Zoo for Endangered Species
• Poop Collector
• TV Watcher
• Video Game Tester
• Fart Soldier
• Princess
• Social Worker
• Toy Maker
• Solar Plane Engineer
• Veterinarian
• Inventor of the Massaging Toilet

Interesting. And awesome.

So, how did the kids get here? Well, before working with some exceptional volunteer tutors to complete an activity sheet (pictured), I engaged the kids in a discussion about jobs – and work – that has come and gone over the last 150 years; the idea was that the kids needed to know what work started and stopped, and when it did, in order to get a sense of what might come in the future. The discussion was actually more of a yell-fest (there should be more yelling in school, in my opinion), as I brought up volunteers who held up a picture of a job (e.g. Lamplighter or Pony Express Rider), which I explained to the group, and then moved it along a giant time line (crafted on a huge piece of white paper), which spanned from 1875 to 2025. When they got to a point on the time line that the audience didn’t agree with, we all booed. And when the kid got to the right spot (this differed from group to group, as some of the kids felt that vinyl record production stopped in 2010) everybody cheered.

And that’s how we got to the activity sheets. Here are some examples of the great work these kids did:

I’ll go so far as to say that pretty much everybody enjoyed the group-activity (even Lucy, the intractable volunteer who experienced/put-up-with all 10 of my workshops); however, watching the kids – especially the boys – tackle the worksheets was a bit different. About half of the kids immediately took to the activity. The others, well, I can safely say – and I say it with much fairness – that not everyone became immediately super-enthusiastic about their career during the holidays…when they’re eight years old. And here’s the magical thing: as soon as the activity was framed with the questions ‘what do you like to do?’ and ‘how can you turn that into something that you could do for work?’ nearly everyone got into it. Oh, and the fact that the kids got to draw pictures as themselves doing the work was pretty darn fantastic. Especially the Fart Soldier!

Describing the very good feelings that bubbled within when the kids proudly shared their pictures and stories with me and especially when they excitedly (and some, I’ll admit, begrudgingly) commented on the value of the exercise and that thinking about a future career – or simply what careers might look like in the future – was “really helpful” or “important” or “pretty cool” is difficult to say the least. So I’ll just say that working with kids in a way that helps them to think about blending interests, talent, passion, and future possibilities in the world of work was as enjoyable as it was meaningful.

So, what’s the work that you want to tackle in the future?

–

All photos courtesy of Sarah Maitland

In honor of National Youth Literacy Day on August 26, 2011, 826 National invites you to try your hand at writing projects like those offered to students at 826 centers nationwide. Founded in 2002 by award-winning author Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari, 826 centers provide under-resourced students, ages 6-18, with opportunities to explore their creativity and improve their writing skills. The organization marks National Youth Literacy Day on August 26 as a way to celebrate the power of reading, writing, and self-expression.

826 National will be publishing entries beginning August 22, 2011 in their online Writing Gallery. Authors of the organization’s favorite entries will receive a gift bag full of 826 National merchandise. Projects include writing a haiku with 8-2-6 syllable lines, a short comprised of 82.6 words, and an 826 character news story.

For more information and to submit your poem or story, please visit  http://www.826on826.org/
ABOUT 826 NATIONAL

826 National is a nonprofit organization that provides strategic leadership, administration, and other resources to ensure the success of its network of eight writing and tutoring centers whose goal is to assist students ages six to eighteen with their writing skills. Our work is rooted in the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. Last year, with the help of 5,000 dedicated volunteers, our centers—which are located in Ann Arbor, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.— served 24,000 students.

And if you’re interested in the 826 Vancouver movement please let me know, as powerful people are doing powerful things as you read this. It’s time to get inspired, folks!

Informed discussion, enlightened imagination, and literal comprehension are the pillars of an active and engaged people. They enable organization, planning, and debate; all of which are critical to a healthy and functioning society.

CC publicdomainarts on flickr

It is difficult to overstate the importance of libraries and literacy.

While it is true that communication tools have led to improved access to information, the effectiveness of that access in terms of promoting local community development and community literacy is greatly diminished by the quest for monetization and the decentralized and isolated nature in which we receive it.

One of the great defining aspects of libraries, beyond providing access to a wealth of information, is that they are communal in nature. Scan the offerings at your local library and you will find activities, courses, support, services, and events that help build strong communities at a grassroots level.

Helping parents raise literate and informed children, helping students and teachers with research and access to information, and opening our eyes to publications from around the globe that provide insight into every aspect of our lives. All provided not for profit, but for our collective good.

Libraries serve as a critical grounding during a time where we are all-to-easily distracted by links of the day, explosions on television, and celebrity gossip publications.

They reveal and support the best in us all. The loss of any of these services would be detrimental to our communities, yet at the moment we find that loss a very real possibility.

BC provincial public libraries have not yet received their 2009 annual operating grants from the provincial government, nor have they been told how much money they will be receiving – both of which usually happen earlier in the fiscal year. There have been strong indications that the Province has decided to stop funding libraries and that this funding may be cut from the current and subsequent budgets.

http://www.stopbclibrarycuts.ca/public.htm

With articles in community publications across the province, the reaction to this holdback by media points to the importance of libraries to our communities.

Hopefully that coverage leads to informed debate and action that results in a long-term plan to support libraries and the communities of British Columbia.

It’s our chance to support those that support us, to bring positivity to a political debate that is all-too-often debased with uninformed comment, and to steer our representatives towards a very real way they can support the communities from whence they came.

You can find out more about what funding means to British Columbia’s libraries, and how you can become engaged through the British Columbia Library Association. If you’re interested they have an official response and list of other resources as well.