Georges Vanier Secondary School · Guidance & Counselling

Where Am I Headed?

Before you work out what something costs, it helps to know what you are aiming at. This builds you a roadmap from what you have already done and what you already know about yourself.

Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere. What you type disappears when you close the tab — nobody, including the guidance office, can see it. So print your plan at the bottom before you leave.
Step 1

Where are you right now?

This decides which next steps make sense for you. A Grade 9 roadmap should not look like a Grade 12 one.

Pick a grade to tailor your next steps.
Just so we can show you which counsellor is yours.
Step 2

What have you done so far?

Tick anything you have done, even once, even if it was small or informal. No test, no score — this just works out what is worth doing next.

Exploring what is out there

Experiencing real work

A weekend job counts.

Step 3

What do you already know about yourself?

Copy your myBlueprint Who Am I results across so they sit together in one place — we do not repeat the surveys here. Everything is optional. Not done them yet? Open myBlueprint ↗

Your interests — the six types

Tick your top two or three. From the Interests survey.

Of the five surveys, this is the one career research leans on most, and it is what the job-matching tools are built from. If you only copy one thing across, copy this.

What motivates you at work

Tick your top two or three. From the Motivations survey.

Underrated. Two people can want the same job for opposite reasons, and this is often what decides whether you are happy once you get there.

Subjects you are strongest in

Tick up to three. From the Knowledge survey.

Useful at course selection time: prerequisites are the thing that quietly closes doors in Grade 11 and 12.

Personality type & learning preference — worth a look, with a caveat
Treat these two as conversation starters, not directions. Personality type results are known to be unstable — a lot of people get a different type when they retake the test a few weeks later. And the idea that you learn better when teaching is matched to a “visual”, “auditory” or “kinesthetic” style has repeatedly failed to hold up in research. They are interesting to reflect on. Neither should rule a career in or out for you.

Your personality type — pick each letter.

How you prefer to study — useful for how you revise, not for what you become.

Careers myBlueprint suggested for you

From the compatibility survey. List up to three.

A suggestion is a prompt to go and investigate, not an instruction. The useful question is always “have I ever spoken to someone who actually does this?”


Thinking about your future

Three short questions — and being able to answer them is one of the strongest signals in the research, stronger than most of the activities in Step 2.

A rough answer is fine, and it is allowed to change. Having no answer yet is the thing worth working on.

This matters more than it looks. Students whose job plan and education plan do not match up do worse later than classmates with similar marks — and that mismatch is about three times more common among the most disadvantaged students. It is not about ability. It is about who happened to be told how the system works.

Step 4

Your roadmap

Built from what you ticked above. It updates as you go.

Already behind you

Nothing yet

There is no total to reach and no score. Everyone starts somewhere different.

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    What to do next

    Where this list comes from, and why there is no score

    Step 2 comes mainly from the OECD Career Readiness project, which followed large groups of young people from about age 15 into their mid-twenties across eight countries and looked at which teenage activities went with better outcomes later. It confirmed 11 indicators. Worth knowing: Canada produced the most consistent evidence of any country in the study.

    These are associations, not guarantees. Nobody has shown that doing these things causes a better career, and this page does not claim they will. The evidence also differs item by item — some are confirmed indicators, some had only partial support, and a few (talking to your counsellor, campus tours, researching costs) are simply what this department sees work. The report itself notes that surprisingly few of the surveys asked anything about guidance counsellors, which is a gap in the data rather than a finding against them.

    There is no score because a score would mostly measure your circumstances. The same research records that these activities are unevenly distributed — students from better-off families do more of them. Someone working long hours to help at home, or who arrived in Canada recently, or whose family has no contacts in the field they are curious about, would come out “low” through nothing they did. So this page counts what you have done and never divides it by anything.

    Source: OECD (2021), Indicators of teenage career readiness: guidance for policy makers, Education Policy Perspectives No. 43, and Covacevich et al. (2021), Education Working Papers No. 258. OECD Career Readiness project ↗

    Who arranges what — please read before setting anything up

    The school organises and supervises co-op, SHSM and OYAP. Those are school programs, with the supervision and coverage that goes with them. If you want workplace experience that the school is responsible for, that is the route — ask your counsellor.

    Everything else on this page you arrange yourself. Job shadowing, workplace visits, informational chats and internships you find privately are set up by you and your family. Georges Vanier and the TDSB do not arrange, supervise, insure or take responsibility for them. Your counsellor is glad to talk through who to approach and what to ask — that is advice, not an arrangement.

    Talk to a parent or guardian before you set up a visit, and let them know where you are going and who you are meeting.

    What this page is not

    It does not assess you, test you or predict your future. It organises what you tell it and suggests what is worth doing next. Nothing here replaces a conversation with your counsellor, and no result from myBlueprint or any other survey should decide what you are capable of.