Exploring Pathways and Inspiring Careers: Keystone High School Career Seminars
Education is a lifelong endeavor that doesn’t stop when students graduate. To best prepare students for the future, educators often focus on transferable skills and interdisciplinary learning that can be useful for a variety of subjects. Research has shown that exactly such soft skills, such as collaboration, communication, and creative and critical thinking are needed for successful careers. In addition to focusing on these future-ready competencies in the classroom, Keystone has recently embarked on a project centered on preparing students for specific careers that they can pursue in the future.
Helping spark future careers for students was the inspiration for the Exploring Future Careers series of seminars organized by the Keystone High School. “We wanted to provide High School students with a sense of what the world of work is like, and how the world of work is changing. We wanted to show students that there are so many different pathways for getting into a career,” explains Mr. Nick Daniel, the Assistant Head of High School. With this goal in mind, the Keystone High School Office began to work with Ms. Yiner Ya, the Parent and Alumni Relations Coordinator to create these events.
First, a survey was sent out to Keystone parents, to understand their areas of expertise and passions. Next, based on information from the survey, as well as the subjects that Keystone alumni have gone on to study, the High School created events themed around careers in various popular industries. They then arranged for parents who are experts in these industries to come and present to students in Grades 10-12 about their work, how they got into their careers, and to answer any questions students have about working in these industries. These panel discussions are geared towards helping students know what they can do starting now to prepare for a future career.
The first session of Exploring Future Careers took place on November 1. This seminar focused on “Artificial Intelligence and the World of Work”, and featured special guest speakers Mr. Gabriel Guo, an expert in the artificial intelligence and spatial computing industry, and Mr. Coly Li, a Software Engineer with over two decades of expertise developing open-source software. Both Mr. Guo and Mr. Li shared their personal experiences working with AI and encouraged students to open their minds to the endless possibilities offered by changes in technology. Students interested in working in the technological sector will be able to leverage new developments in AI to shape the future of the industry.
The second seminar was hosted on November 21 and featured the topic: “Making a Difference: Business, Finance, and Economics”. This event featured two financial experts: Ms. Chloe Mo, a financial Managing Director and Ms. Wei Lai, the CFO of a gaming company. They described their own career paths to students, both of which wound from science and technology all the way to finance. With their unique backgrounds, they advised students on practical ways to break into the financial industry, and steps they could take from high school to university and beyond to begin a career in finance, even if students planned to major in other subjects such as engineering. Their stories inspired students that there are many ways to start a successful career in finance, and that many diverse and interesting opportunities exist in in the fields of business and economics.
Following the first two successful seminars are four more upcoming events in the Exploring Future Careers series from now until May of 2024. Upcoming topics include media and communications, marketing, art and design, and entrepreneurship. While these events will be fantastic opportunities for students to explore their future careers, they are only the beginning of future-focused education at Keystone. “We want to involve parents in making the curriculum more experiential. When we see opportunities in the curriculum, we want to try to take it out into the real world and have students solve real world complex problems using the skills and knowledge from the curriculum,” says Mr. Daniel. The Keystone parent community has been instrumental in expanding experiential learning at Keystone as the school continues to find innovate ways to set students up for a lifetime of success in whatever career path they choose.
