- Navigate the workplace with cultural confidence using soft skills when interacting with peers and the community.
- Develop the self-confidence to navigate the workplace when interacting with community, employers, clients, and colleagues in a professional setting.
- Incorporate rules, responsibilities, and rights of the workplace in their daily work environment.
Greeting
From Elder Alf Dumont, BCIT Indigenous Initiatives.
At BCIT we are excited to see growing numbers of Indigenous students enter our trades programs and move on to prosperous careers in the trades. We know that the journey to success is not always easy and that Indigenous graduates can face many barriers including cultural misunderstanding and even discrimination or racism in the workplace.
Listen to our Elders, Mary Williams and Alf Dumont, and employer Neil Thevarge, speak about the Indigenous experience and finding support.
In the spirit of reconciliation and through recognizing that many Indigenous students are disadvantaged and experience barriers to employment and wellness that others do not, the intention of these modules is to support Indigenous trades students in their journey from the classroom and into the workplace. These modules are designed to encourage wellness and instill confidence by focusing on skills and activities that promote success both in life and in the workplace.
How to Use and Adapt this Guide
We recognize the diversity among Indigenous communities in Canada and encourage you to adapt this guide in order to make it relevant to your community. The lessons in this guide can be broken up into several shorter learning experiences and can be easily adapted to presentation slides.
Action Planning Tool
The Action Planning Tool in Appendix A can be completed by students as they work through the modules. Activities related to the Action Planning Tool appear in blue boxes throughout this resource and are marked Action Plan Activity and numbered to correspond to the numbers in the Action Planning Tool. This planning is intended to give students an opportunity to design a clearly thought-out career and wellness plan that they can reference as they enter the workforce or go through career transition.
Additional Exercises
The are also exercises in purple boxes, such as interactive quizzes, that can be completed to help reinforce the content.
