On September 30th, JP Michel gave a keynote to more than 100 participants at the Idaho College and Career Readiness Summit. This was not your average career conference, however.
The Idaho Department of Education's Advanced Opportunities had a different vision for this event. They wanted the session to have a lasting impact on participants, so they invited speakers to create a personalized workbook to accompany their presentations. This workbook allowed educators to put their learning into practice right away.
To bring the Challenge mindset to life, Camille Arseneault, a member of the SparkPath team, researched several Idaho-based companies working on important challenges. Then, they used a backwards-design to find employees in those companies, and the education path they followed. This allowed participants to get a better understanding of how exactly they got to their current points in their careers. Some of the featured Idaho companies included McCain’s, Chobani, Indie Dwell and Black Box.
This keynote presentation coincided with Canada's National Day for Reconciliation and Truth. In Canada, an important challenge is working towards reconciliation with the Indigenous population. The Challenge mindset can help students to identify the challenges, problems and opportunities related to reconciliation, and what role they would like to play.
The Challenge mindset approach deeply resonated with the administrators, counselors, college and career coordinators, and students who attended. According to feedback provided by participants, the presentation was given a 9.6 out of 10. One of them highlighted the following:
“I had never thought before of switching our conversations to a backwards-design. Starting with why and what is so important.”
Presenting at the Idaho College and Career Readiness Summit is part of SparkPath’s vision to share the Challenge mindset with students from all across the world and enable them to take ownership of their future.
If you would like to watch a recording of JP Michel’s keynote presentation, see this link.
