Students given a ‘beautiful opportunity’ on Take Our Kids to Work Day

For Manitoba’s annual Take Our Kids to Work Day, roughly 800 Grade 9 students from across the Brandon School Division ventured out into various workplaces across the Brandon area.

At Brandon University, Grade 9 student Abby Allen pictured herself before lunch in a career working as music teacher, but after a STEM lesson in the afternoon piqued her interest, she said she’d consider pursuing biosystem engineering after she graduates.

“It’s a really good thing if you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up,” said Allen, a student from École secondaire Neelin High School.

Students who were unable to go to work with their parents found host spots with organizations such as BU, Assiniboine College, CFB Shilo and Westman Immigrant Services.

About 93 per cent of all Grade 9 students in BSD were spread out in different workplaces, said Graciela de Tobar, career technician for the school division.

“I think it’s a really, really beautiful opportunity for children,” de Tobar said.

She said events like Take Our Kids to Work Day allow students to “put in action what (they) have learned in school.”

“As I say to the students, the limit is the sky, it’s up to you because here we have all the resources,” de Tobar said.

At BU, Career Trek — a provincial non-profit that runs career-oriented programing — hosted Allen, along with three other students, in the Health Studies Complex.

Allen said she was “really excited” in the days leading up to Wednesday’s excursion.

“I was really ready to like learn some new stuff,” she said, explaining one of her highlights from the morning was identifying ingredients in a mystery smoothie.

Instructor Morgan Seabrook handed the students a smoothie in a paper cup with five ingredients and challenged them to guess what was inside. Allen said they successfully guessed three out of the five ingredients.

In the morning, students were asked to imagine they had just been hired as dieticians and to brainstorm what foods they should recommend to a client based on the sugar, cholesterol and calorie content.

After some pizza for lunch, the students split into two groups and pretended to be bioengineers, making bioplastic from corn starch along with other household ingredients.

Peter Byansi, Career Trek general manager for the Westman region, said exposing young students to different career directions boosts their confidence and helps them to understand the value of completing high school.

“So today, these ninth graders are being exposed to the real world of work and what is possible. We hope by the time they leave here, they will be more curious,” Byansi said.

“Manitoba depends on us exposing young people to these opportunities early enough, because then that builds their confidence (and) builds their understanding of which opportunities exist,” he said.

Nathan Chuks, a student from Vincent Massey High School, said he would tell future students to “be open-minded” to the day, while fellow Vincent Massey student Maro Okuku said, “Come prepared to learn.”

» rgerrard@brandonsun.com