IN PICTURES: Narrogin Senior High School and South Regional TAFE host Careers in Our Community for students

Narrogin Senior High School hosted a careers day for their students last week with the Year 9s given a special vocational experience with virtual reality and diverse career demonstrations.

Year 9 students spent Wednesday on the oval learning about different avenues in agriculture, hospitality and technology after South Regional TAFE contacted the school eight weeks prior to organise a career day.

Sensr Solutions spoke about new career opportunities drones are creating across industries like traditional drone piloting and engineering roles, and specialised fields including monitoring, mapping and inspections for agriculture, construction and more.

A shearing show by Rob Carter, an educator for the TAFE’s Australian Wool Innovation, expanded the students’ knowledge of Narrogin’s agriculture industry while Hilltop Cafe operating from the school’s Trade Training Centre gave students and insight into hospitality.

Virtual reality education by Mindflight7 enabled students to try their hand at any job of their choosing to develop their interests and understanding of the workforce.

NSHS careers practitioner and vocational teacher Wendy Sargeantson said it is an important developmental time for Year 9s.

“They’re at the exploration stage developmentally and start to think ‘what career may suit me?’”, she said.

“We want to expose them to lots of different careers so that can make those choices, ‘I might like this, but I don’t want to be in that environment’ or ‘I don’t want to work nights, so I won’t do this’.

“You can only know by being involved.”

Students from all years completed a bingo card which encouraged interaction with the 19 stall holders set up in the library, such as the shire, police, health services, renewable energy organisations and environmental and community groups.

Ms Sargeantson said the expo focused on community connections and networking and it was fundamental to have the whole school involved.

“We’re all on our career journey, even in Year 7 we’re still evolving and formulating our ideas,” she said.

“It’s not just about career exploration, it’s how they could approach someone for advice, how they got started, what subjects they did, and moving forward.”