Overview
Guiding Circles Booklet One: Understanding Yourself challenges individuals to explore their life experiences as a guide for career assessment. Working with a career connecting coach or teacher, individuals identify specific life stories in a positive, focused, self-reflective way, connecting their personal discoveries to the realm of school and work. The Career Circle helps create a self-portrait evaluating eight elements that builds a foundation for the later stages of career exploration and decision making. Discovering one’s gifts, talents and sense of self offers an incredible source of strength to walk the career journey.
Useful for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups or individuals of any age or gender, Guiding Circles is flexible, adaptable, and engaging. Guiding Circles brings together modern career concepts with Aboriginal perspectives for a comprehensive and holistic career assessment approach that works with the whole individual – mind, body, emotion, and spirit.
Guiding Circles Booklet Two: Finding New Possibilities helps individuals use what they discovered in booklet one’s self-assessment process to explore career alternatives and effective career decisions. The use of storytelling and creativity to chart meaningful career paths is infused through this workbook as well. It inspires people to build their career vision, one step at a time, breaking long term goals into smaller weekly or monthly steps. The concept of community as a sense of connection and its role in a holistic career support model are discussed. Finding New Possibilities engages the individual to explore and prepare for the career journey by realizing that who they are points to what they can do. Each individual is gifted with a wealth of career possibilities; it just takes some creativity, patience, and new perspectives to help them self-determine their career path.
This resource is published by Indigenous Works which is an Indigenous-led, not-for-profit organization advancing Indigenous employment and inclusion.
Visit Indigenousworks.ca to learn more.
Objectives
- To support culturally sensitive and active engagement for career development for Indigenous learners through a storytelling approach.
- To support career development pathway decision-making through the use of Indigenous perspectives and world views.
Instructions
Educators can purchase each workbook online for $7.50 Canadian on the Indigenous Works website at iworks.org
The website hosts links to a variety of experiential professional learning opportunities – such as communities of practice, webinars, training, as well as a job board that includes job postings.
Each of the 2 booklets is accompanied by a facilitator workshop described below:
The Guiding Circles booklet One Workshop inspires and enlightens teachers, career coaches or individuals to bring new tools to the career development process. This workshop encourages you to participate in the process and reflect on your own career journey stories while discovering an active engagement approach that better connects you to your clients by meeting them where they are engaged in life. You’ll explore the circle as a metaphor for careers and life, learning to identify and resolve conflicting values and connect the career process to families, friends, and other influencers. Along the way, you will develop questioning strategies that drill down to a deeper level of understanding to enable individuals to discover their skills, talents and passions through story-telling. This facilitated two-day workshop will provide new skills to educators to deliver Guiding Circles to learners.
Building on the foundation of Guiding Circles booklet one, The Guiding Circles Booklet Two Workshop integrates an Aboriginal worldview with effective career strategies. Through this process, a wide range of career options are generated, and the career circle is explored as a ‘match’ for an individual’s career ideas. Career decision making is conducted by looking at reasons, challenges, resources, decisions and actions. You’ll learn strategies to prepare individuals to overcome challenges along their career path, evaluate their entrepreneurial skills and involve their social circles in decision making. By the end of this workshop, educators will understand how to help learners generate many career possibilities then narrow them to a select few.
While these resources are intended to support Indigenous learners, they can be applicable all learners and provide an authentic Indigenous perspective to career development pathway planning.
TO REGISTER Visit indigenousworks.ca and follow the links to Guiding Circles.
Key Highlights
- Each workbook is accompanied with its own 2-day professional learning workshop.
- Each workshop provides access to a coaching manual.