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4 Meet a local employer This will take some planning, but you’d be surprised at how many people are happy to pop into a school lesson to talk about their work. Make it clear to them what you’d like the students to get from the encounter, ensure your class has been prepared to receive the visitor and make sure the school reception knows to expect them. Also inform your careers leader, so that they can keep a record. teachwire.net/secondary 1 Tell career stories! We all love a good story, so tell your students about the part- time jobs you had when you were a student, your early career and any volunteering experience you’ve undertaken. If you feel comfortable doing so, tell stories about your interests, especially if they’re linked to the subject you teach. I managed to get a bottom set Y11 science class fascinated in plants by telling them about my own experiences of harvesting birch water from a tree in my garden, after which we spent a couple of lessons gathering and analysing plant sampling data from the school grounds. Have the students tell you about their hopes and aspirations. A slight change in the way you emphasise or introduce an activity can help young people see links between the skills they gain in the classroom and the world of work. Try these four ways of incorporating career learning more deeply into your lessons... By acting on any of these suggestions you’ll have contributed to your school achieving Gatsby Benchmark 4, ‘Linking curriculum learning to careers’. More importantly, you’ll also be helping the young people you teach to be more prepared for the next part of their exciting journey! 3 Link careers and curriculum Get in the habit adding slides to your PowerPoint presentations which show a person doing a job that uses skills or knowledge from your subject area. This image can be used to challenge stereotypes and encourage a few minutes of class discussion about the relevant career being shown. In RE, for example, you could show a male nurse using their communication and empathy skills, or in maths, a female architect using algebra. In English, you could discuss the jobs held by fictional characters. 2 Boost your students' employability Many websites list the skills employers value, but an easy starter for STEM subject teachers is to download and put up the ‘Top 10 employability skills’ poster available from STEM Learning (see bit.ly/stem-learning-10 ), which details a set of skills that can be encountered across all curriculum areas. Go through them and think about when they’re used by students in your lessons. Next lesson, discuss with the students how certain activities are helping them develop certain skills and why they’re important in the workplace. Perhaps they could reflect on this in their exercise books towards the end of the lesson? ABOUT THE AUTHOR Liz Painter was a science teacher for 25 years, is currently studying for a master’s degree in Careers Education and Coaching at the University of Derby and is a Pledge Facilitator for the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership There’s a good chance that you’re already linking curriculum learning to careers, says Liz Painter – so why not make those links even clearer andmore engaging for your students? C A R E E R S 45 Every teacher is a CAREERS TEACHER