Let me just say I was headed a completely different way with this week's FTM Thought, but after I read an article a colleague had posted on LinkedIn, I definitely chose an "alternate route" for today's time together. If you have young children, if you work with elementary, middle, or even high school students in some capacity today's message is relevant and critically important as they grow, mature, and begin laying the groundwork for their future.
Typically Flat Tire Ministries Thoughts are intended to be of an uplifting positive nature on a topic of life perspective. Today's message is more of advice for all of us as we provide the canvas for our children to draw their own individual map. Our job, provide them with as many alternate routes to get there as possible and let them choose the one that they want to take! Read on, reflect, and then take action.
The article "Students 'Dream Jobs' Out of Sync with the Emerging Economy" by Sarah Sparks in the February 8, 2020 edition of Education Week poses the hypothesis that today's children still aspire to jobs of the past as their main goal in life. That would be okay if it wasn't for the fact that today many of the jobs of yesterday are either being done by computers and robots or they are on the downhill slide as prospects for the future. I have provided a link to the article and I encourage you to read it a little later after we finish. Basically though, the research that Sparks provides suggests that "we" as the adults that help support students as they maneuver their interests and aptitudes through their experiences and exposure to create plans for what's next after high school base our "teaching" on a model that may very well be limited at best. One of the core matters of concern is that if "we" are the ones that are consulting and mentoring our children, yet we are not aware of the careers and career fields that are emerging, "we" will probably still promote and guide our students towards the fields "we" are most knowledgeable of, hence the aforementioned jobs that are founded in our past, not their future.
Let's do a little experiment, bear with me on this one, I haven't requested you to do homework very often. You'll need a piece of scrap paper (reuse old envelopes for stuff like this, conserve), a writing utensil, and turn on the stopwatch app on your phone. Okay set your timer for :30 seconds. Now right down as many careers as you can come up with in that :30 seconds. GO! After you finish go to the article link below on the top 15 emerging career fields in the United States and scroll down through the list. How many of the careers on your list are among the top 15 emerging careers?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/11/linkedin-emerging-jobs-report-2020-fastest-growing-us-job-pays-136k.html
You may be in much better shape than I was as a career counselor, but my guess is if you are above the age of 30 your list looked similar to mine. I had some broad similarities like "doctor" or "IT" (That's Informational Technology in case you don't have that one in your vocab yet.), but overall my list paled in comparison to the career fields that will be our children's to fill. I advise you to go back and read that article and do some research on emerging career paths if you are in any of those roles I mentioned earlier.
The problem is how can we advise our sons and daughters, our students and athletes, and those we mentor through work and life if we don't know have knowledge of those destinations and definitely the path to take to get to their potential destination? We don't want to hinder their potential, yet if we don't have the knowledge to share, how can we expect to successfully mentor and guide the leaders of tomorrow? What potential damage could we do if we only show them the route that we know without exposing them to the alternate routes that they may need to venture?
It is our duty, no, our responsibility to provide students with the tools they will need to make informed decisions about their future. That is a fact that should not be debatable. Yet what about our children's faith future? First, as in our example above, we will only be able to advise our students with the background knowledge we possess. So, if our faith is weak or non-existent how will we ever advise or provide guidance to our children? How can they decide what they believe if they don't know what there is to believe? In much the same way as with careers, this is our responsibility. We as the adults are tasked with providing the example by which our future leaders will delve into what they see and hear and then create their own beliefs and aspirations. Do you have a faith to share? Are you a lifetime learner that reads, listens, prays, and seeks God's will for your life? If this isn't part of our life, then how can we expect our children to make an educated decision? Will we leave it up to the entertainment world to teach them what is important? Will we close our eyes and say we hope it turns out well for them? Or will we assume that they will figure it out for themselves because we don't want to pressure them into believing something? How do you think that story is going to end?
Solomon, who we associate the word wise with, shared his thoughts on this topic in Proverbs 22:6 "Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." Whether we are talking advising students about possible career fields or if you as a parent want to help your child make sound decisions about their faith in God, you have to be somewhat of a specialist yourself. Read, seek, knock, and listen to sound doctrine that will give you the tools you need to assure you don't send those you mentor and advise down an alternate route that leads to nowhere!
Coach Carter
Here's the link to the Education Week article by Sarah Sparks. I highly suggest you read this if you have children or work with children in any capacity.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/01/22/students-dream-jobs-out-of-sync-with.html?cmp=eml-contshr-shr
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