Coaching the invisible classroom

Schools, students and employers may be looking for volunteers like you, to work an Enterprise Adviser, despite the restrictions of Covid.

A teacher’s job is challenging enough at the best of times, so when it comes to helping students prepare for the world of work, they sometimes need to call in the cavalry. Coordinating careers-related mentoring on a?virtual?basis hasn’t made this task any easier but together with Local Enterprise Partnerships and employers, it’s been delivered despite everything …

For the last six years, outside of my day-job, I’ve been working as an Enterprise Adviser with local schools, coaching careers-related stuff to groups of students up and down the Thames Valley. In common with almost every other job, the pandemic hasn’t made this any easier, but it’s been received with gratitude all the same!

Thanks to the Covid rules restricting schools from inviting outsiders like me into the classroom, we have been forced to deliver wisdom and guidance on subjects such as ‘how to get a job’ or ‘choosing a career path’ to these oft-bemused pupils via Zoom, Teams or Google Meet. Challenging, but rewarding, and increasingly important if the next generation of workers are to meet the expectations of employers everywhere.

Trust me, it was tough enough to hold their attention standing in front of a classroom or assembly hall in person.??But since lockdown dictated we deliver these sessions virtually – thus hugely restricting the essential interaction required for this process – it has tested the patience of all concerned.?

Additionally, safeguarding rules generally prevent us (as non-teaching staff) from seeing their faces either. So you could find yourself pitching into the blackness of a blank computer screen to student audiences who may or may not see you, hear you or even have slightest clue what you’re going on about!

But the show must go on: these youngsters have suffered enough obstacles over the last two years. Not only are some looking to progress to higher education despite interrupted teaching time and extra exam pressures, but others are about to venture outwards into the daunting world of employment, made even more challenging for them as a result of insufficient careers advice.

As a mere volunteer here, I get to see first-hand how the teachers have had to cope with this?full-time, often having to deliver an entire curriculum remotely for the first time; getting to grips with technology that – thank God it has at least been?available?to most of them –couldn’t possibly replace physical classroom effectiveness.

At least the students knew their teachers and probably had coursework to follow offline as well as on. Whereas us Enterprise Adviser folk, we were just some new faces in a virtual window talking to them about the baffling world of work they were about to experience. Or, we’d be introduced to them as disembodied voices only, to interview them for the first time ever and pick the bones out of their first attempts at CV writing. I hope we didn’t make it all sound even more daunting than it already was in their minds, pre-Covid!

But you know, what I can say is that in every school I have worked with, there is a thirst for knowledge about the careers pathways and the industry options open to them. Sure, they have other distractions to deal with right now, but I love their energy and their curiosity and hope we have made it all more appealing and less scary.

It’s easy for employers to bemoan the lack of ‘workplace-ready’ resource coming though the educational pipe and yes it will not be helped by a pandemic in the short term. But the raw material is most definitely there – it just needs?more?hands-on help by?more?employers, and more (voluntary) interaction with the schools in their area.?

A bit of?monetary?sponsorship wouldn’t come amiss either, because most schools need more funding to improve the talent pipeline that they are doing their best to expand and improve upon, and it cannot all come from Government coffers, IMHO.

If you are interested in offering your expertise and advice to schools on careers and job-seeking, perhaps try this link first and see how you can help?....?

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