Robots, hairstyling and new discoveries: N.L. students test out their skills for future careers
Students 'might have a little skill that they might want to build on,' says Skills Canada N.L. chair
Kathryn Walsh may still be a junior high student at Juniper Ridge Intermediate in Torbay but she's already trying her hand at professional hairstyling.
She says she enjoys the creative freedom.
"It's very difficult to, like, get it exact. We are doing a prom look … an updo, I think. I'm trying to find out that wow factor, and I don't know what it will be yet, but I'm trying to just look for it."
Kathryn was one of about 300 junior high students from 27 schools around the province who competed at the 19th annual Skills Canada Intermediate Challenge on Saturday, held at the Prince Philip Drive Campus of the College of the North Atlantic in St. John's.
It was the first in-person event held by Skills Canada N.L. since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March. Students can try out and compete in 14 different areas of trades, technology and employability skills, like pitching, job searching and public speaking.
They also get to build robots out of Lego.
Nicolas Reid is part of a team from Clarenville Middle School competing in the First Lego League Robotics Competition.
"We've been building this for like the past month," said Reid, "but I'd say a few other schools have been building it since maybe the beginning of the school year. So either way, it's a lot of fun."
Skills Canada partnered with the league to challenge students to apply design, coding and teamwork skills to complete a variety of tasks, such as pushing and pulling objects with their robots to score points.
Nicolas said he could see some of his teammates going into careers in robotics or programming but he was just taking part for the fun of it.
"Our main coder on our team? He's really, really good at this. The other two people on the coding team, including me, we're just second eyes for him, in case he gets something wrong," he said.
Winners from the competition will go on to represent their schools in the provincial competition, and potentially continue to the national competition in Winnipeg next May.
Hands-on experience
The real win, though, according to Christine Greene, the chair of the Skills Canada N.L. board of directors, is getting students excited about possible future careers.
"They want the hands-on experience," she said, "and for many of them, this has been their one and only opportunity to dig in, put their hands on materials, make something of it and use their creativity and realize they might have a little skill that they might want to build on or try."
Greene is passionate about getting young students to think about different careers, enabling them to make better choices as early as high school.
"We are actually the only province in the country that offers this program to Grade 7, 8 and 9 students and we're really proud of that," she said.
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