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Lift Off to Higher Education is a free, interactive online program that supports students in grades 6, 7 and 8 in identifying their interests and skills, and introduces them to various pathways of education. Also included in all programs is information on financial literacy and how it impacts students’ futures.
The Lift Off program is delivered by video presentations, accompanied by workbooks and independent activities for students, with seven to 10 modules per grade. Lift Off supports guidance counsellors, classroom teachers, special education teachers, and administrators as they present ideas for career planning to their students.
The online program is based on the popular in-person program that Laurier delivered to schools in the Waterloo Region District School Board, Waterloo Catholic District School Board, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board and Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, reaching more than 44,000 students in 11 years.
The grades 6, 7 and 8 Lift Off program objectives are aligned with the Ministry of Education’s Creating Pathways to Success: An Education and Career/Life Planning Program for Ontario Schools.
The objectives focus on the document’s four areas of learning:
You can choose to do the programs at any point in the school year, whenever it is most appropriate for you and your students.
You are also free to choose which modules you want to focus on and which modules you do not want to present. It is entirely up to you which activities you want your students to complete, if you want to facilitate the activities online or do some as paper copies, etc.
The programs intended for each grade level are not a prerequisite for one another (e.g. students in grade 8 do not need to have done the program in grade 7).
Please feel free to share the program with any other teachers who would like it, including other schools or school boards.
Why do jobs disappear? What jobs will be needed in the future that don’t exist now? What impact will these changes have on your future? These are just a few of the questions that will be discussed in the grade 6 program.
During the program, students will:
How do our individual skills, interests, values and personality make us unique and how does this knowledge help inform our career choices? This is one of the many questions we explore during the grade 7 Lift Off program.
Students who complete the program will have experience:
We want to help students and their families understand how a postsecondary education can be achieved.
During the grade 8 program, our facilitators will guide students through: