The first step in career planning is self-assessment. 

My Personal Brand activities have been designed to assist students as they engage in the process of self-exploration. Learners will begin to identify skills, strengths, interests, and values and to explore compatible career pathways.
 

Students will have the opportunity to learn more about themselves and who they could be as future entrepreneurs. 

Through these learning experiences, students will use critical thinking skills to make decisions and interact collaboratively with classmates. As they make decisions, they will show their creativity in problem solving and in communicating their rationale and choices to others. They will gain insight into themselves as risk takers and leaders. 

In addition to seeing themselves as innovators and future business owners, students will learn that entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit are about more than starting a business. As part of their learning experiences, students will be challenged to reflect on needs and problems in society, increasing their awareness of citizenship and social entrepreneurship and empowering them to be changemakers.

This theme provides opportunities for students to explore and discuss a variety of occupations and workplaces. Students will then reflect upon their own preferences in regard to the nature of the occupations that interest them most and the kinds of work environments in which they might feel comfortable. The goal is to help students gain a virtual or in-person experience of a workplace.

Career development activities for younger students are designed to engage them in focussing and reflecting on particular occupations and workplaces. Experiential learning/exposure activities for older students include the Grade 9 Take Our Kids to Work™ program and other in-person or virtual workplace visits that allow students to observe a worker at a place of employment, experience workplace realities, reflect on occupational skills, and consider their own career interests.

Networking involves developing, maintaining, and mobilizing relationships, not only as sources of information, but also as conduits of support, encouragement, additional contacts, and, ultimately, opportunity.

Networking is an important career development manoeuvring strategy as students gather the information and build the skills, strategies, and contacts needed to expand their vision of what might be possible in their future career journeys. 

Networking can help students to answer the questions, “What are my opportunities, and what do I need to know and be able to do in order to access them?”

Students will engage in activities that will help them develop a plan for the future. 

Within this theme, the activities view this development as a journey. In this vein, the primary activity will engage students in envisioning themselves in the future, while depicting getting to that future as a journey. The elementary activity revolves around filling a backpack with the skills and attitudes necessary to be successful in the journey. The intermediate activity continues with the same imagery, having students fill a car for their career journey. The high school activity depicts the journey as making it to the other side, using education and career milestones as steps across the river of life. Finally the post-secondary activity is a scavenger hunt, requiring students to find out information that will form the planks of their career boat to aid them in their travels.