Welcome to the Ponder Program
Everything you need to successfully teach career management skills
Easily integrate life-changing career education lessons into any school setting with the Career Development Framework (CDF)
40 flexible lessons
Teach careers, pathways, and personal development topics every week of the year across all year levels
15 mins per week
Fits perfectly into non-curriculum time like Home Room, Form Class, Tutor Time, or to add value to Pastoral Care, PDHPE, or PSHE lessons
Delivered by anyone
Lessons can be delivered by you or your teaching staff (easy-to-follow instructions and notes included)
Elevate your teaching, inspire their thinking
Let’s face it, students don’t really want to learn Trigonometry, Shakespeare, or Geography – they just want to be ready for the world of work.
But without the right skills and knowledge to choose a career they’ll love, they might become one of the 79% of adults across the world who feel ‘disconnected’ with the work they do each day*.
The Ponder Program solves that – with easy-to-use career education resources that inspires students to actively think about their future.
*Gallup State of the Global Workforce 2022 Report
Turn any time into high-value careers time
Finding a space to ‘fit’ career education in alongside everything else is a challenge – and we know that on average, students are only receiving around 2 hours per year of career education (yes, you read that correctly).
The Ponder Program makes it easy to do much more, as it takes just 15 minutes per week to have a positive, constructive conversation about a career management topic in a time that could be under-utilised in your timetable. How you deliver Ponder is up to you, but most Ponder schools have teaching staff who deliver the units during Homeroom/Form Class, Tutor Time, Pastoral Care, Wellbeing Time, Mentoring lessons, PDHPE or PSHE.
We provide the slides, videos, teacher prompts, and student activities – all ready for your educators to access and deliver.
What does the Ponder Program teach?
The Ponder Program covers four (4) key learning areas that teachers can cover in lessons to help your students make a successful post-school transition. With ten (10) learning units per Module, you’ve got everything you need to educate and inspire your students across all year levels.
Module 1
Understanding Self
First, students are supported to explore their strengths and learn about their priorities. In primary school this may mean exploring favourite subjects, while senior students work on building learner profiles.
Module 2
Self in Context
In Module 2, they start to see themselves in relation to their environment. This includes learning about appropriate workplace behaviour, finding balance, and managing conflict.
Module 3
Exploration
Module 3 is where we explore the labour market at a local, national, and global level, and at the same time students learn how to find meaningful work.
Module 4
Connection
Finally, in Module 4 we bring everything together so that students can begin to set goals and make plans that relate to their understanding of themselves and the world of work.
Run it as your entire careers program, or use it to supplement your own
Ponder is perfect for schools where:
- No career education structure exists
- Your current program/lesson content isn’t working
- You need access to modern videos, lesson plans, and activities
With fresh new content updates each year, it’s a program your school can fully utilise across all upper-middle and secondary school levels to build your students’ career management skills.
Lessons are based on The Three Phase Inquiry Model
Learning career management skills requires more than just ‘rote memorisation’. Career education should be exciting and engaging, which is why we use a Three Phase Inquiry Model to structure each unit.
It’s simple, effective (and your students will always want more).
Discover
Students are introduced to the topic and given a chance to learn about the concept before going further
Discuss
Once students and teachers have watched the Discovery video, they can discuss their thoughts and ideas
Demonstrate
Encourage deep learning and reflection with the activities and thinking points which accompany each unit
Promote reflection and deep learning for all students with a model that gets them thinking.
Flexible delivery that suits your school timetable
The program includes 40 weeks of career education resources for ages 12-18, but it doesn’t have to be delivered sequentially week-by-week for it to work.
- Have weekly timeslots available? Follow it week-by-week.
- Infrequent lessons or schedules? Combine multiple lessons together into one action-packed session.
- Particular focus area? Choose a lesson that suits your age cohort, career education topic, or timing.
Each lesson can be as little as 5 mins or extended to 30 mins depending on your available time and depth of discussion. But the length and mode of delivery remains entirely up to you.
It’s all about giving you the tools to start the right career conversations, at the right time.
Drawn from global best-practice frameworks
Based on the internationally-renowned Australian Blueprint for Career Development (recently updated in late 2022), Ponder also has additional concepts drawn from leading frameworks in the UK, USA, and Canada to ensure you’re teaching modern career management skills to your students.
Ponder has been thoroughly reviewed by the Career Development Association of Australia in August 2022, and was “strongly recommended” for commendation by their independent assessor – meaning you can choose the Ponder Program for your school with reassurance that it’s a quality education program.
Can Ponder work in my educational setting?
(The short answer is YES)
Ponder is now being used in hundreds of secondary schools across Australia, the UK, and New Zealand with great success.
- Government/Public Schools/Colleges
- Private Schools
- Religious Schools
- Independent Schools
- Large Metro Schools & Tiny Regional Schools
And it works well in every context because it’s so flexible.
Only teach careers in Year 9? Or Seniors? Or all grades?
That’s totally ok – choose from the program as you need to
Missed a week?
No problem, it’s not sequential or co-dependent
Want to pick and choose lessons?
Totally fine, you know your cohort and needs better than we do
Designed to be high-value, low-cost
Great career education is critical to life in our developed world, so whether you’re at a well funded school, or one where just the basics are covered, you’ll be able to budget for Ponder.
You and your entire school will get:
- Access to the Ponder Career Education Framework (CDF)
- 40 units of engaging lesson materials including videos, slides, worksheets, printable posters, conversation starters and more
- Framework PDFs designed to support your teaching and to help inform other educators how to address career conversations with students
- Rationale PDFs you can share with your school leaders, Dean of Curriculum/Head of Senior, so they know the ‘how & why’ of what is being taught
And all for one affordable price per year.
Plus, you'll also get access to Ponder Pathways
‘Ponder Pathways’ is our wildly popular career education resource collection, with things like researched Weekly News you don’t need to prepare yourself, Student Pathways Guides to help with decisions, Job Spotlights that profile different careers, and a free Careers Website for your school.
It means hundreds of hours worth of content preparation saved each year (while making you look like a superstar)
Regularly communicating about careers makes a difference, and these beautifully designed resources can help you do just that.
Schools love using Ponder
Educators love how we help them to have thriving career education programs in their schools – and we hope you’ll soon be letting us know how much you love our programs too.
I have already been given Mondays during home room for Ponder. I get 5 mins – a great way for students to start the week in 2023. I just love the video and the one question for discussion – just brilliant.
Thanks for the email and document [Ponder Resource PDF]. I love that it is all together and makes it so straight forward when working with other staff who can feel out of their depth when asked to do something not in their "subject area".
Frequently Asked Questions - FAQs
Is the Ponder Program flexible?
Yes, Ponder is designed to be adaptable to any school setting – whether you are intending to follow the framework week-by-week across all year/grade levels, or if you intend to draw from the resources to supplement your own program. It’s entirely up to you.
Can other educators on my team deliver Ponder lessons?
Absolutely. The Ponder Program has been designed so that either the Career Educator/Counsellor can deliver it in career education lessons, or have their wider education team teach it during non-curriculum/self-development/wellbeing/mentoring times. School timetables are often busy, so Ponder makes it easy to take advantage of opportunities for quick careers lessons.
Are there instructions or 'how-to's for it?
Yes. Ponder has been designed with a Teacher Resource Booklet PDF for each of the four (4) modules of the program. These contain teacher instructions, lesson structures & intents, year/grade level contexts, and slides + videos to teach from. Even the presentation slides have teacher notes included, so preparing and delivering a lesson takes just minutes.
Is this framework applicable in my country?
When we created the Ponder Program’s Career Development Framework (CDF), our senior career practitioner looked at multiple frameworks from countries such as the UK, Canada, New Zealand, USA, and Australia, and chose to base the structure on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development.
This was because ‘the Blueprint’ is internationally-renowned, comprehensive, modern, and has recently been updated (in late 2022). Long story short, the Ponder framework is applicable in nearly every english-speaking institution, with easy adjustments that can be made by your educators to suit your local setting.
Do we need to login to access the materials or lessons?
No. One of the best features of the Ponder Program is that you only need to login once to download all of the materials, and then you can simply deliver lessons (or have your educators deliver them) from the PDFs. Students don’t need to login to do activities either, as the Student Workbook is in PDF and has editable fields, and the students can then save them on their device.
Do I need great wifi coverage in the classroom?
Yes. However, that’s only so that your educators can play the videos that are built into the program (securely hosted on Vimeo). Other than that, the internet is not required as everything is in PDF or Microsoft Powerpoint slides.
How is it billed and for how long? When do I renew?
Access to the Ponder Program is provided to your school on an annual basis of 12 months from the date you start your membership with us. We send you an online payment link (with a PDF invoice for your records), and as soon as your school has paid securely online by Credit Card, you’ll have full access to the program materials.
One month before your term ends, we’ll automatically send you a renewal invoice for your convenience, as most schools can’t live without our helpful resources and want to renew. Some schools have been with us for over 12 years.
Start inspiring career conversations today with the Ponder Program
Ponder has transformed the careers programs of hundreds of high schools – to get started, simply click Apply today (or Talk to the team to find out more).
We’ll respond to you ASAP.
