How ICAS is helping Rebekah with her career aspirations

Do you remember what you wanted to be when you were a 10-year old?

At that delicate age, where childhood has only just started to recede into the background, you might have wanted to be something wildly aspirational like an astronaut or a Hollywood star; a professional footy player or the Prime Minister of Australia.

For 10-year old Rebekah from Wyong in New South Wales, her career ambitions are certainly aspirational, but they’re also eminently practical. Before we get into them, a little more about the young lady herself.

Rebekah was born in Kerala, India in 2014, where she lived for two years before moving to Australia with her parents. To this day, she’s grateful for the move, pointing out the excellent air quality of our vast country – probably something that few of us consider a blessing despite its importance.

Rebekah has two younger sisters who are five and one, but sadly, no canine family members – some of her earliest memories in India are playing with her grandpa’s pug and golden retriever. Perhaps mum just needs a little more convincing…

In addition to pooches, Rebekah likes the majesty of lions, the tenderness of hugs, and raspberries, because, well, they’re delicious. She also loves English, which propels her towards books as well as writing fantastic tales of characters who go on thrilling adventures, much like her favourite Wild Robot series. Using her imagination is a delight – except when she gets writer’s block. No 10-year old needs that.

It’s fair to say that Rebekah is a happy, inquisitive child. And her desire for knowledge extends to her future career, where she has outlined not one but five potentials:

Given her lofty ambitions, it’s a good thing Rebekah enjoys school so much, and is lucky enough to go to a school with plenty of opportunities for extension: Wyong Christian Community School. One of the opportunities the school offers is academic competitions, including our very own ICAS, which has a positive influence on Rebekah’s career aspirations for a variety of reasons, the first of which is the development of her all-important higher-order thinking skills.

To be a doctor or a high-flying lawyer, a dentist, a pharmacist or a successful English teacher, Rebekah will need to solve problems, think critically, and apply skills and knowledge to entirely new contexts – all higher-order thinking skills that are crucial for the workplace. ICAS is designed to test and extend these very skills, helping to pave the way for her future success.

These higher-order thinking skills also happen to improve her talent for debating, and as an integral part of the school’s debate team, this is something she’s very passionate about. Debating may come in extremely handy if she becomes a lawyer, or perhaps even a politician. She professed that she’d love for all politicians (and humans in general) to just get along, but if this actually happened, she was slightly dismayed at the fact that there wouldn’t be any need for debate.

From Rebekah’s perspective, aside from strengthening her higher-order thinking skills, she mostly loves the challenge of the ICAS competition – a good thing because she’ll face plenty of tough challenges in her prospective professions. Becoming a doctor or lawyer will be far from easy, and as every teacher will tell you, their profession is tough.

For Rebekah to successfully navigate her chosen career path (she’ll need to settle on one, eventually), she will need to regularly understand her current level of skill and knowledge so that she can discover areas of improvement – an instrumental task for her teachers.

Thankfully, Rebekah (and every ICAS participant) can strengthen their understanding of their skills and knowledge by analysing their ICAS results, where they can see exactly how they performed for each subject and skill area, down to the questions themselves. This is gold for Rebekah:

With improvement an ongoing priority for Rebekah, and so many other important things to learn during her education, time becomes a limited resource that she’ll need to tame. How long should be spent focusing on each piece of work? How long on each question during a critical test? If she becomes a qualified doctor, how long to spend with each patient? As a timed competition, ICAS is an aid here too:

It’s clear that Rebekah finds plenty of value in ICAS, but how did she actually do in last year’s competition?

She sat the test for four subjects, achieving credits for Mathematics and Science, a distinction for English and a MEDAL for Spelling Bee! After comments on her doing “very well in Spelling Bee” from various teachers, including the principal, she was suspicious that something big was afoot. Eventually, when she found out and was invited on stage to celebrate her fantastic achievements, she was bursting with nervous delight:

When it comes down to it, this is what ICAS is all about. Rebekah was invited to participate in a challenging academic competition, she tried her very best, and she was rewarded for her excellent work – a result of her passion and dedication towards learning. In her own words:

Becoming a doctor, lawyer, pharmacist or another demanding professional is certainly a big thing, and we’re thrilled that ICAS is helping to give her the skills and confidence to get there.

When asked what her superpower might be, Rebekah said she’d love to be able to time travel. She wants to see what will happen in the future and what the past was like all those years ago, especially because she somehow imagines that the past was black and white.

Well, when Rebekah qualifies in whichever profession she chooses, the past may remain black and white, but the future will be a little brighter and more colourful with her in it.