Work Experience 12 is a great course designed for grade 12 (and mature grade 11) students to explore a workplace environment to gain first hand ("real world") knowledge about a perspective career field.

One strong rationale for the course, as stated by the Ministry of Education, is that "... the community is the classroom where students gain knowledge and experience about the workplace and are provided with a frame of reference to review or revise their career goals. Work experience provides students with an opportunity to apply classroom learning in a context outside of school and to bring back to the classroom new perspectives about their learning."

Work Experience during CoVid19 is still happening - all safety protocols are being taught and followed as outline by the Pro​vincial Health Office and the Ministry of Education. These can be viewed on our district website under "CoVid-19 Pandemic Response".

• 25 - 35 hours of "pre-employment" in the classroom
• Example of main learning areas:
• Career Investigation
• Post secondary and Labour Market Research
• WorkSafeBC, including
  Employment Standards and  
• Cover Letter and Resume
• Interview Skills
• Standard Worksite Agreement (between: employer - student/parent - school district)
• and other relavent skills and knowledge
   
• once students have completed the pre-employment section, they will no longer be required to attend that block, but still need to complete the 90 hours of actual work experience. These hours are usually done outside of the normal school day:
• after school, and/or
• weekends, and/or
• breaks (some days over Christmas, Spring break, pro-d days,...)​
   
• after successfully passing the pre-employment section, especially a good understanding of WorkSafeBC, students will then be covered by the district's WCB while out doing the community-based​ hours of actual work experience
   
• 85-95 hours of "work experience" in the community
• WEX teacher and student will work together to find suitable placement options
  
• Hours that have been previously done, like a volunteer job last summer, do not count towards WEX... they must be hours that are done after the pre-employment section
• Students are covered by WorkSafeBC (WCB) while out on unpaid work experience, as long as they have successfully completed the pre-employment assignments
• As best as possible, the placement will try and match the desired career
   
• some placements will allow the student to actually perform the job, examples:
• "mechanic" working on actual cars doing brake work
• "accountant" who is doing a bank reconciliation statement or data entry
   
• some placements can only allow students to observe the actual job, but they can do entry-level tasks in that environment, examples:
• "vet" who watches/shadows the actual veterinarian perform a checkup or surgery, but is only allowed to do very basic animal care and handling in the office with dogs and cats
• "engineer" who will do some research-type tasks as they are not qualified to actually work on drawings and designs due to lack of training and certification
•  "nurse" or "doctor" who works at a seniors care home helping out in a variety of activities with patients (as traditional hospitals do not accept high school students for WEX) 

• Face-to-Face
• Students sign up for this course in the Spring at their own high school during course selection time...
  just like they do with any of their other courses like Math, Spanish or Drama
   
• Online
• Students who prefer to do it online can register for this course anytime during the school year.
  Registration is done through Coquitlam Open Learning (COL).
  They must complete the pre-employment assignments before going out for their 90 hours.