• November 6th is the date. Grade 9s all across the province are waking up and getting ready to go to work. Wait, that’s not right! Shouldn’t they be going to school? Nope, not today! For November 6th was Take Your Kid To Work Day!

On November kids in grade 9 went to their parents work to job shadow a bit to see what career path they might like in the future. Since I am in PLP though, there was no way my teachers wouldn’t take this awesome opportunity to learn to waste. They decided that all PLP 9 students would go to work and record a video and an interview about three main topics. NUMBER 1! How does personal public identity affect the work place. NUMBER 2! How does work contribute to our community and society from diverse perspective? NUMBER 3! How do individual purposes and passions support needs of local and global communities when considering career choices. We would figure them out by making a video, which is the theme of PLP 9. We would also interview someone about those topics as proof of our discoveries.

I ended up going to one of my friends parents work. He works at Johnston Davidson Architecture and is one of the senior associates at the firm. Johnston Davidson Architecture is an architectural firm that specializes in Fire Halls and other protective services.

The first step about filming this video was planning exactly what I was going to do. I needed an action plan. The first step to that was figuring out what shots I needed to make a good video. The next step in this action plan was figuring out who I would interview. I decided on interviewing Kimberly Johnston, the principal of the firm. She has been in the architectural business for a while and her father was the founder of the business so I don’t know who would be more fitting to interview about these topics. The next step was coming up with questions I could ask her. I based my questions off of the three competencies we were being assessed on. They were mainly about why she became an architect and what she thinks being an architect means to the community.

Now was the time to actually go to work. We started with going to the construction site of the Maple Ridge Fire Hall No.4 and training centre. My friend and I got to sit on a monthly meeting about the building and issues or topics about the building. Then we got a tour of the construction site which was really cool because we got to see the workers working up close. Then we went back to the office and learned all about the different ways they designed the building and got to see a sketch of the building.

I really learned a lot from this project and I did have a lot of fun doing it as well. It was really interesting job shadowing a job that I have been interested in for a long time. I also was very interested in Kimberly’s answers and I really did have a good time. If I could do this project again I would do more time in the pre-production part of this video because that is the most important part of making a video. I feel like I could have been better prepared but that is it I think. I’ll see you all in the next post!