School: Ballajura Community College [Western Australia, Public System]
Educator: Kevin McDonald (Career Practitioner)
Context: Year 7-12, mix of University/Trades/Direct Employment Pathways
“…it works very well. Ultimately, the buy-in from the teachers for the Ponder Program has been very good”
Educator and Career Practitioner Kevin McDonald came across the Ponder Program while studying for his Grad Cert in Career Development in 2022 as part of the Western Australian Government’s fantastic initiative to fund new career practitioners in public schools.
Initially, Kevin said he wasn’t sure how he’d use the Study Work Grow resources in his school setting, but once he saw the Ponder Program and realised he could easily get general subject teachers delivering short careers lessons, he’d solve the problem of getting ‘careers’ into his school. Like most school settings, Ballajura Community College is highly focussed on curriculum, which as Kevin said, means that teachers don’t have a lot of spare time for teaching things like career education.
Kevin has implemented Ponder lessons into Pastoral Care (what used to be their Home Room lessons), and his teachers have found it easy to just play a video and deliver a lesson from the materials provided – knowing that they’re giving students a lesson that will help them with their future career choices. He said the Department’s career education tools are very good, but they can’t be delivered in 15 mins, and they also require in-depth knowledge to be able to work with. So Ponder works very well to fill that gap, especially in the older years of 10, 11, and 12 where young people have big decisions to make.
Key Takeaways
- Ponder works very well for getting career education into non-curriculum time like Pastoral Care
- Educators like the materials, they’re easy to use, and the students are engaging well with the program
- As they have internet capacity issues in their location, Kevin prints off the Student Workbooks for the students to use in class (which he said works very well)
- He likes how educators can just play the week’s video, deliver a lesson using the info provided, and then get the students to do an activity.
- He is using some Ponder resources to help subject-area teachers to talk about careers in their classes (which helps with relevance)
- With limited time available, it’s “a very positive product” in that it can be done quickly
- He also found the Ponder Program “is a good lead-up” for educators delivering the Government’s career education programs
We thank Kevin for his time in helping us with this case study and look forward to seeing the positive results of having Ponder at Ballajura Community College.
If you would like to know more about using the Ponder Program to bring more career education time in your school setting, reach out to us by clicking here.
