Life can be a bit like a Pokémon hunt. We have places we want to get to or goals we want to achieve and we’re searching for ways to get there. 

I play Pokémon Go. Yes, I do, in fact I am level 15 and have collected 53 Pokémon. This phone-based game can best be described as virtual treasure hunting with GPS. You go in hunt of computer generated creatures that are positioned in the real life street grid. You catch different creatures at different locations. Actually, I’m not that committed to it but my wife has been. One day on the way back from church she made me stop the car four times so she could catch Pokémon or get Pokémon supplies!

Life can be a bit like a Pokémon hunt. We have places we want to get to or goals we want to achieve and we’re searching for ways to get there. Our school doesn’t exist as an end in itself nor does the education we provide. It is all a part of preparing young people for their future. A future with vast potential and lots of uncertainty. It might be nice in some ways, if real life were like Pokémon Go. It would be easy to know if you winning and you’d know what you need to succeed.

It can be hard for young people to work out what they want to do with their life after school. In the job I have now, I don’t do anything that I ever imagined myself doing. Looking back, I can see that my imagination was quite limited but that was to be expected given my age and relative life experience. That’s why young people need support and input from adults. Yes, I know that even now some of us might still be wondering what we want to do with our lives or even worse what we did with it; but our extra time on the journey will help young people see and interpret the road signs of life better.

Every adult can make a positive difference if you know think about it. A prime example is Vanessa Kidd, our Careers Advisor who runs the careers programme for our students. She will have excellent ideas, great experience and wonderful resources for our young people but remember that she is only one person. She is working with hundreds of young people who each have many hundreds of options. We need to do our bit as well. Our Careers Advisor will help our students gain a little more self-understanding and put forward different ideas for them to think about. Inevitably a lot of ideas will be discarded because that is part of process. Working out what you want often starts with identifying what you don’t want.

Each of us as parents/caregivers will have a huge influence through the expectations we set and the practical support we give. Every family will be different but in our family I push the idea that all of our children will do some further education or training after they finish school. I don’t mind if it is a degree or a trade or something else but I want them do it because it will increase their options and it will be a help to them whatever they ultimately choose to do. Again families will have different outlooks on what might be best but let’s all have high and positive expectations of our young people. This will help them go that little bit further than they might have otherwise.

Another great thing we can do is help our young people work out what they care about. Some people have very clear career goals from very young ages but most of us don’t. But if we can identify a passion we have, it can lead us to a career or even many careers. Some of us love making things. Others love the outdoors. Some love discovering things and others love working with people.

This really matters. A friend of mine is a commercial photographer. One project she has been involved with is telling the career stories of different women. Her website (herstory.org.nz) has 18 wonderful stories that will encourage everyone ranging from the artist to the engineer to the bishop, the farmer, the zoo keeper and many more beside. When I asked her if she could boil down everyone’s advice to one big idea, she said “Do what you love”. It’s good advice for all of us.