13 September 2023
From barista training to industry immersion weeks, the Workabout Centre supports Aboriginal students to make a successful transition from school to work, higher education or further training. In this episode, hear from the Workabout Centre’s Senior Project Officer Natasha Chisholm and former Workabout Centre and Mark Oliphant College student Jacob who is now working at the Australian Taxation Office. They share how the Workabout Centre helps Aboriginal young people learn important skills and discover career options.
Show Notes
Transcript
Intro: Teach is produced on the traditional land of the Kaurna people. The South Australian Department for Education would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay our respects to all Elders, past, present and emerging.
Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from the Department for Education and today we are joined by Natasha Chisholm who is the Senior Project Officer for the Workabout Centre at the Department for Education. And by Jacob Turner, who is a man we have to be nice to because he works for the Australian Taxation Office and is a former graduate and person who's come through the Workabout Centre program.
First of all, for those who are out there who don't know what it is, Natasha, what is the Workabout Centre?
Natasha Chisholm: The Workabout Centre is a school to work transition model. So when we're talking to students and families, we basically say our jobs are to help Aboriginal young people stay in school, complete SACE and then ultimately achieve a successful post school pathway.
So we run a whole different range of programs that's going to support a student's school retention and then give them opportunities to explore training and career pathways.
Dale Atkinson: So, before we came on air, I was having a look at the website that you guys curate, which is available for parents and for students to look at, which is workaboutcentrecareers.com which you can go and look at and explore, and people should definitely have a look at that. But the broad range of activities that are available and the pathways that you make available for students to explore is pretty incredible. Can you tell us a bit about the scope of the work?
Natasha Chisholm: The scope of our work is really driven by our young people. We'll have a lot of generic programs we sort of run, so things like barista, white card, first aid, all those small little qualifications that help a young person go into a training environment for the first time, start actually exploring what they do and don't like. And then we might, depending on student interests, look at individualised programs.
If we have a group of students who really want to explore university, then we might work with the university to create a program that's specifically for them. We do a lot of work readiness as well, so those basic entry level employability skills. And we do a lot around that essential identification as well.
So birth certificates, tax file numbers, which Jacob's now an expert on, getting bank accounts, Medicare cards, all that identification that a young person's going to need once they leave school as well. And even in school, once they get a job. Last year, we started a lot of volunteering programs as well. So it's really driven by that student demand.
Plus what's happening out in the community and, and with the industry, we just try to, yeah, match that all up and create opportunities.
Dale Atkinson: So you've got a group of 120 students, I think you said that you're working with this week. What's the experience that they're enjoying at the moment?
Natasha Chisholm: So that's year 10 students from across the state. I think we have maybe about 20 school sites involved in that. That's for the ACE program, so ACE is Aboriginal Career Education. It's the third year of the program, so those year 10s during term 1 to 3, undertake a couple of career education workshops with our team, and then they come together a couple of times throughout the year to explore pathways.
This week is all about picking your individual industry, so we have 11 groups across 9 different industries. So each day, the students are bussing out to their activities, like our animal care group today is going up to Mylor to Animals Anonymous. We have three different trades groups going out to do bricklaying, carpentry, other various industry tours.
Our health support group today is going out to the TAFE SA Dentist School at Gillies Plains. So it's really about them learning, trying hands on activities, and learning more is this pathway really for me. And then next week, when students are going back to do subject selections, the aim is that they're able to make more informed and educated decisions about their pathways.
Dale Atkinson: Yeah. I'd imagine that's incredibly helpful, which is probably a good time to throw over to Jacob. In terms of the experience that you had, how did that help you clarify the work pathway that you wanted to take?
Jacob: My original plan was to go to university up in Queensland, James Cook University. And the whole idea was, what am I going to do for work while I'm there?
And I had no skills. I was just like, yeah, cool, I'm going to go to uni, that's it. Without thinking about what I'm actually going to do while I'm there. Enter Tash, where she's like, oh, you know, we've got barista courses, we've got this, we've got that. And Cairns, which is where the university is based, is a huge tourist destination.
So, my idea was, I'll go be a barista. When I did the barista course in year 9, which I think I was the youngest out of the group at that time, and then from there it was just starting to look into all these other places I can go. So the barista course, I did a white card, so I can go work on construction sites, which I ended up using for like stage setup and takedown, things like Adelaide 500, the Queen concert that was in Adelaide a couple of years ago. And then I ended up doing a kitchen operations course for a year, learning how to cook. Not just for a career, but also just being an adult.
Dale Atkinson: Just for life.
Jacob: Yeah, that's it. But a lot of it was kind of coming out your shell, being around, being put into these practical situations that you wouldn't get in school.
We'd do a coffee morning here at the Education Department. So, you know, we'd be downstairs, we'd have to talk to people, we'd have to be loud, we'd have to be fun, charismatic and whatnot, which we weren't used to. We're all, you know, 13, 14, 15. That ended up leading into cafe jobs, restaurant jobs, and then into sales.
I ended up not following my plan and going up to uni, but yeah, being able to speak to people, those, those skills that you kind of get as a by-product of doing these other courses that really helped build my communication and being able to get into a Federal Government job at 19, which I was the youngest there at the time and, you know, have a chat to some of my other mates and they were just learning those skills that were just getting those jobs.
So, yeah, I think that was a big takeaway of. Working with Tash and the Workabout Centre, you get all of the skills that they primarily teach, but then also the life skills that comes with it that you don't really notice until, yeah, you do it and you grow up and go, Oh, I learned that really young compared to, you know, them, them, and them.
Dale Atkinson: While you're talking, what it makes me think about is you end up with a, quite a safe space to explore all of your options, really. Tash, is that kind of the aim of what you're going after?
Natasha Chisholm: Absolutely. So, Workabout Centre is a team of Aboriginal people, which is quite unique. And no matter what we're doing with our young people, it's a culturally safe and supportive environment. That's first and foremost. So even when we're engaging non-Aboriginal trainers and businesses, we do a lot of work beforehand to ensure that this is going to be the right environment for our young person. And we could have a group of 10 different kids together and they want 10 different pathways, and we'll support them to explore that.
But that just fills my heart with joy hearing Jacob talk about that, his experiences now and what he learnt. That's the takeaway though for me and the rest of my team as well. It's not, yes, this is our jobs, but we're actually supporting our community and our future leaders. And yeah, that's added bonus I think for us.
But one of the key things we say that works for Workabout is we don't say no. And what we mean by that is when a young person comes to you and says, I want to explore this pathway, or I want to do this job. And even though we might know it's unrealistic, we don't say no, we say like, yep, let's explore that together.
Let's find out what's the first steps in that. It's about letting that young person grow and learn for themselves. Actually, maybe that is unrealistic or it's not going to work out for me or it's, there's no opportunities there, but what is there? So we like to go on that journey with them.
Dale Atkinson: I think the interesting thing about what Jacob was talking about in terms of the breadth of your experience and the, the variety of avenues that you kind of explored, which is you don't really know how one thing leads to the next, do you? Like the journey from being a barista to working for the tax office is not direct, but you had, I think a bit of a plan and a bit of a way to explore it. Would that be fair to say?
Jacob: Yeah. You know, before that plan was in place, I had no idea what I was going to do, but I believe actually my plan at that time was drop out and be a sparky.
And then Mum once again was like, oh yeah, you might need some other skills before you get into that. You know, Workabout Centre came along and that's when I just started prodding around and looking at what options until I found that plan and then looking at what options help directly with that plan.
And, you know, as I said, it doesn't always go to plan and, but it all kind of works. To doing a barista course, it wasn't just how to make coffee, it was how to talk to people, how to build those relationships with people very quickly. You know, it takes two minutes to make a coffee and you've got to really make a good connection because at the end of the day, that's what people come back for.
They come back to see the barista. Even if your coffee is a bit, how you going.
Dale Atkinson: I think that's very true. I know, speaking on behalf of the entire department workforce that when the Workabout baristas come in, we are very grateful for the, for that.
Natasha Chisholm: We get a lot of that feedback, yeah.
Dale Atkinson: Yeah, no, it's terrific.
I think one of the things that sort of strikes me is that there's a bit of a wraparound here, Tash, in terms of what the student experience is. Can you talk about what that one-to-one experience and support from you looks like?
Natasha Chisholm: Yes, as I mentioned before, like, we take a really individualised approach because there might be some students who need more support, one on one support.
There are other students who prefer that we work with them in smaller groups. I think it's important to mention, like, we're not a full-time program. We're not a flow program or alternative learning, but we are there to support our young people when they need us. So someone like Jacob started in year 9, but then he also engaged with us year 10, 11, 12, and obviously several years post school.
So students can come in and out of Workabout Centre programs and services as they need that. There'll be some students where we might take a step back and do behind the scenes work a lot because the ASETO and the Aboriginal education staff in their school have that really great relationship with the young person and the family, and we might just be able to provide supports on the, I guess the outside of that, and just come in when we're needed.
And then there's other times where our coordinators might be that key person for our young person, and they're the number one contact and we're drawing in other services as they're needed. So again, it's all student driven. Like I said, we can put the opportunities out, but it's a young person's decision if they want to engage.
Dale Atkinson: And what's the age range that students engage with you?
Natasha Chisholm: It's generally 15 and up. If it's accredited training, sometimes there's minimum ages. We have run events for students as young as year four. We have like a, it's called career walk. So students come and do like little 30-minute activities of actually just starting to learn, Oh, I, I like doing makeup and hair.
I can actually do a pathway in that. So, just starting to, I guess, create that spark for them. But generally our programs will be year 9, 10 and upwards.
Dale Atkinson: And just looking at the website again and the broad range of options and areas that students are able to explore, can you talk to us a little bit about your connections with the tertiary institutions, with the training providers and with the industry?
Natasha Chisholm: Yeah, so when we're working with the universities, we're primarily working with the Aboriginal units in those universities. So, for example, just on Tuesday, we worked with the Yungkurrinthi team down at Flinders University with Indi and Viv, they're amazing. And we said, hey, we've got a group of year 10s coming who want to explore these pathways. What can you do? So they've taken the regional students through the university accommodations, we've gotten them on campus to actually see what it's like to be a uni student for the day. And then they've explored those different faculty areas as well. And we do that with Adelaide University and UniSA have hosted our health group for two days this week.
And those staff are amazing at being responsive to us and what our young people need, they create really engaging and interactive programs. Cause we know that if it has Workabout Centre’s name across it has to be engaging. It has to be interactive. It has to really capture our students’ interest. So that's why we work really closely with those people to ensure that that's going to happen.
With our RTOs, we work with a really wide variety. And again, We'll do a lot of that background work, maybe with the trainers to gather, you know, what's your experience working with Aboriginal young people, maybe actually support them to look at how they're going to deliver and what's their alternative assessment methods and do we need our stuff in there as support as Aboriginal people when there's a non-Aboriginal trainer.
It's the same with industry, for example, with Kmart, their indigenous recruitment officer has been great, and he works with us a lot to identify where there's local employment opportunities. So then our coordinator can go out to the school, target some of those young Aboriginal people, prep them up for interviews.
And we've had a lot of young people get jobs with Kmart through that industry connection.
Dale Atkinson: Well, it just sounds like there's nothing that a student can't dream of that you aren't able to kind of at least give them some concept of how to achieve that thing.
Natasha Chisholm: I would like to think that, like, we hear that you can't be what you can't see and dream big and all of those sorts of things.
I just think we should be empowering our Aboriginal young people in our community at every opportunity. Showing my age, I didn't have a lot of these opportunities. I was in a regional school as well; I didn't have a lot of opportunities to explore these certain things. And we didn't have school-based traineeships and apprenticeships at the time.
I didn't work when I was in high school. So I really value this, and we can bring this to our young people now. We'll do everything in our power to make that happen for them.
Dale Atkinson: What would your advice be, Jacob, to other young Aboriginal kids who are thinking about various different careers and, or maybe even don't know what they want to do?
Jacob: Just have a crack at everything. You know, if you don't know, it's harder to research into it than just do it. At the end of the day, it's, it's a job. You can go work at a place for a couple of weeks, if you don't like it, you can get a different job. I know growing up, it was very much like, oh, it's very hard to get a job.
It's very hard to get this, that. If you've got your head screwed on, it's not as hard as people make it out to be to bounce from one job. You know, you can try being a barista for six months here if you don't like it, go work in the kitchen for six months. If you don't like it, go work as an administration officer somewhere for six months.
Like, that's okay to do. You don't have to nail it on your first shot. Some people get lucky and they do. You know, some people work at the same place for 14 years. And absolutely love it. Yeah, and other people, they don't find what they love until, you know, they're 30, 40. And that, that's, that's fine.
Dale Atkinson: Yeah, might even go higher on that number. I think that's good advice.
Natasha Chisholm: Because there's so much pressure on young people to, you know, know what you're doing after year 12. It's okay if you don't, I think you make a really good point, Jacob, like, just try different things, as long as you keep doing something, keep moving forward.
Dale Atkinson: Now, Natasha, how do people find you?
Natasha Chisholm: Me personally? No. For staff in schools, our Aboriginal education teams in secondary sites are our key people, and they're often connected to their local Workabout Centre coordinator. So we have three metro coordinators, and then we have three coordinators who are covering regional areas. So they can reach out to those people.
We do have a page on the internet and the intranet as well, with all of our contact details. We have a generic Workabout email address. That you can go to, which is education.WorkaboutCentre@sa.gov.au and that'll come through to me and we'll send that out to the relevant coordinators. We have a Facebook page that you can keep up to date with and you can message us through that.
And then we also have the careers page that you were referring to earlier. Oh, we're on the 15th floor in the education building, so come say hi.
Dale Atkinson: There are a lot of open doors on all platforms. So it's, I guess there's a message for our educators, but there's also a message for any Aboriginal young people who are thinking about entering the workforce in the next three to four years, that the program's there to explore and navigate career options and possibilities. They can help you to make informed career choices beyond school. There's the opportunity to take up school-based employment opportunities that can increase the likelihood of students finishing year 12, completing SACE, all these sorts of activities.
But most important of all, I think, was what Jacob touched on in his conversation earlier, which is the opportunity to develop the broadest possible range of skills, capabilities beyond just work skills, but life skills and expand your horizons as a human being. It's quite a, quite a program.
Natasha Chisholm: Yeah. You never know where it's going to take you.
Jacob, I would consider a colleague now as well. So Jacob and Zane, another student who's come through Workabout Centre, came out to one of our career expos earlier in the year as stall holders. So that was great to, a proud moment for me, yeah, to see some of the young people we've worked with over the years actually now participate in programs in other ways and engage our young people.
Dale Atkinson: Self-sustaining. It's an incredible thing. Natasha, Jacob, thank you very much for your time.
Natasha Chisholm: Thank you.
Jacob: Thank you.
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