What will you be when you grow up?
The exam results will just have been out and this is the time when students of class X have to exercise their first serious choice of subjects. All of us have either already gone through or will be soon be going through this crucial phase.
These days, students have a multitude of career choices. This is often both a curse and a boon. The wide variety implies that a child is no longer “compelled” to stick to routine choices. However, the confusion of having too many choices is daunting. Career choices are frequently made based on limited or inaccurate information. This leads to a de-motivated professional life. An easy to do self-assessment can help the child avoid making wrong choices.
The 2 X 2 matrix is a simple tool to help the student map his strengths and interests. At a very basic level this exercise can be done for the subjects being taught at school.
Let the child map all the subjects that he/she is learning in school, starting from the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) to the languages (mathematics, English, telugu/urdu) and the social sciences (history, civics, geography, economics).
The child’s strength can be assessed based on the true subject knowledge; school marks and olympiad scores could be used as indicators for this purpose. For a start, take 80 percent (can be fine-tuned further) as the border, anything below will fall in the “Low” cell and above in the “High” cell.
Interest is more a subjective criterion and the first reaction of the student about the subject could be an indicator. Otherwise, the time spent by a child on a subject can also be used as an indicator. More time may imply more interest (could be opposite in some cases where the kid is forced to work on a subject because he/she is weak).
A similar exercise can be carried out on the skills, viz., retaining information, numerical ability, physical stamina, concentration, fast reflexes, fitness, etc., to help the child have further awareness about his/her ability. Once this exercise is done at regular intervals (perhaps annually) it will help in building self-awareness. It should be coupled with opportunities to get exposed to different options available in the society.
Encourage the students to make their Strength – Interest maps and based on that a brief write-up on what they would like to become.
The article has been contributed by Butterfly Fields, a company working in the domain of innovative teaching learning techniques. To know more about the work the company does visit www.butterflyfields.com or call 040 27711020/30608888.
