What’s Your Path?

Educator: Stephanie Sternberg,Library Media College/Careers and Business

Cultural Partner: John Cino, Artist, Curator and Educator

School: Wyandanch Memorial High School, Grades 9-12

District: Wyandanch Union Free School District

Summary

Introduction to Dreamings: We began by introducing Australian Aboriginal Dreamings, focusing on their abstract nature and representation of past and future journeys.
Connecting Art to Career Paths: we then bridged this art form to the students' own career aspirations, prompting them to consider their future paths.
Career Research: The students delved into researching specific careers, gathering practical details like daily tasks, tools, uniforms, and salary.
Visual Career Representation: They creatively synthesized this research into a character that visually represented their chosen career without explicitly stating it having other students guess the career shown.
Persuasive Career Advertisement: Finally, the students crafted an advertisement to advocate for their chosen career. We attached these to our character using QR codes

Rationale

Students reflection on personal biography which sets the table for envisioning future career paths

What learning goals/standards did this meet?

Arts:

Indigenous Australian dreamings describe pathways through mythic events, students transfer design style into personal biographies and anticipate future career paths.

CCCR:

Decision making that leads to new gains
The complexity of decisions (in life and in Art)
Knowing yourself
What are your pathways in and out of HS?
Career Clusters (there are 16) that can be represented visually

CR-S:

participatory engagement around the work as personal expression
collaborative practices to make space for many ideas and understanding differences
Awareness of coming of age rituals in non western cultures