Job Genealogy Project

Job Genealogy Project (Family Job Tree)

Purpose of Project

The purpose of the project is to provide an opportunity for you to discover aspects of your family’s job history, which will help you appreciate:

a) the diversity (or lack of diversity) of jobs your parents and family members have held in the past. b) that some of your interests in the kind of future job(s) you may have are some of the jobs your family members have already held. c) that some of the job(s) that interest you may be very different than the jobs that your parents or other family members have held in the past. d) reveal attitudes and/or motivations behind the working lives of your parents or family members that you didn’t know before.

Format of the Project

Instructions: Below it will be indicated where the information you are gathering, through your interview, must appear. It will either appear on the poster-board or on a word file for your portfolio.

The basic aim of the project is to get to know the kind of job history your family members have experienced. Speak to your parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents to find out about their past and current jobs. You may find that your parents are the major source of information about other family members who are not available.

Poster Board Information

1) The jobs that your family members have experienced will be placed on a poster board. 2) Speak to parents and/or guardians, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins, or grandparents about their job history and list the jobs they have tried or have as current employment. (three jobs at most) a) When putting the information together you may use whatever family members you can find or get information on. Your parents may be the best source of information in regards to your grandparents and other members of your family. It would be better to speak to family members directly. b) See a list of guiding sample questions below c) Keep your questions general in nature simply because the main purpose of the job genealogy is to create a history of employment. Try to get birth dates and/or the dates that these individuals worked in their jobs. 3) Create a genealogy, of your own design, of the jobs on a poster-board of your grandparents, and/or uncles, and/or aunts, and/or siblings from both sides of your parents’ families. a) If you do not have access to information from one side of your family or the information from one side of your family is limited use the other side of your family to complete and fill out your job genealogy tree on the poster

4) Close to your name list two jobs that you would like to try out and one other job that you would not want to do. Digital Information

Please Note: The jobs you choose to write about from the genealogy must be different than the three online job explorations and the toolkit that you must complete as part of the career exploration.

1) Provide an explanation as to why you want to try out your choice of two jobs and why you don’t want to try the other job. One paragraph per job minimum (12-15 lines each) Make sure you include answers to following questions below in your paragraph response  Where did you learn about the jobs you want to try out or didn’t want to try out? (t.v., family members, friends, in class doing research)  Would the job be challenging and in what way?  Do you have a biased or prejudiced attitude about the jobs you chose and/or the people who do those jobs?

2) Choose one job, a dream job if you want to think of it that way, you would like to try and write a short half-page essay as to why you think that job is really important to you and/or to our society. Alternatively, you could make up a job that doesn’t seem to exist at the moment. Detail why the job would be important to you, to our society, and what specific function would it serve to improve our daily lives. (Note: you can use career cruising or any other website to do your research: summarize any information you use (put into your own words)) Remember, you must provide a sources page for any information you get from the websites you research.

3) After completing your job genealogy, write a half page essay detailing some of the things you learned about your family and your history. Mention at least three things that surprised or intrigued you about some of the jobs/occupations and the places your family members have been, either in Canada or around the world.