Facilitator guide
Help a student begin Career Clarity in 60 minutes.
This guide is for educators, guidance staff, youth workers, parents, and guardians supporting Ontario students in Grades 9–12. The program is free and requires no account.
Learning goals
Students learn a process they can repeat.
By the end of the starter session, a student should be able to name one career question, rank five personal work criteria, identify three assumptions, distinguish a reliable responsible source from a general opinion, and choose the next program assignment.
The larger five-stage program adds a Career Evidence Brief, a comparison of two education or training routes, an Experience Test Plan, professional questions, and a dated 30-day plan.
Facilitator role
Ask for reasoning, not a preferred answer.
The adult creates structure, helps locate current sources, and checks whether conclusions match the evidence. The student owns the criteria and decision. Avoid steering the student toward a field because it is familiar, prestigious, or personally preferred.
No specialist career-counselling qualification is required to use this public learning resource. Refer individualized academic, mental-health, legal, financial, or regulated-career questions to an appropriate qualified source.
60-minute starter session
From a broad idea to a researchable question
- 0–10 minutes · Frame the task: Explain that the goal is not to choose a lifelong career. Review the five portfolio outputs and ask the student to name one field, role, or work problem worth investigating.
- 10–25 minutes · Define criteria: Have the student list tasks, work settings, values, schedule needs, learning preferences, location, and constraints. Ask them to rank five and explain why each matters.
- 25–40 minutes · Surface assumptions: Write three things the student believes about the career. Turn each into a question that could be checked rather than debating whether it is true.
- 40–50 minutes · Match claims to sources: Choose one government, regulator, institution, employer, professional association, or first-hand source appropriate to each question. Discuss what each source can and cannot establish.
- 50–60 minutes · Commit to one action: Open worksheet 2, set a realistic completion date, and identify the adult the student can approach if a source or requirement is unclear.
Discussion prompts
Questions that improve the portfolio.
- Which conclusion is supported by the strongest source?
- Where are you treating a preference as a requirement?
- Which fact applies to Ontario and which may apply elsewhere?
- What tradeoff is missing from this option?
- Which small activity could test the assumption safely?
- What evidence might reasonably change your mind?
Review rubric
Look for four qualities.
- Specificity: claims and next actions are precise.
- Source fit: the publisher is appropriate to the claim.
- Balance: benefits, constraints, uncertainty, and alternatives appear.
- Actionability: the student has a safe dated next step.
Do not grade a student on choosing a particular field or keeping the same level of interest. A changed conclusion can show that the process worked.
Access and privacy
Adapt the way students respond.
Students may type, handwrite, dictate, discuss, or use another accessible format. Reduce the number of sources at one sitting, provide extra time, or complete the stages across several meetings. The public workbook does not submit answers to Navio; keep student reflections in an approved private location.
Youth-safety boundaries
Supervise contact and experience.
Any professional conversation, observation, volunteer activity, visit, or practical test should follow parent or guardian, school, workplace, and host-organization requirements. Use public or appropriately supervised communication and do not place a student in regulated, hazardous, confidential, or age-restricted work.
Read the youth-safety approachSuggested delivery options
Independent: assign one stage at a time and schedule a 10-minute review after each output. Small group: let students investigate different fields, then compare how source types and tradeoffs differ. Family conversation: complete the criteria together, but ask the student to rank the items and explain the final order.
For a full program, budget about 2.5 hours of student work across five stages. The recommended seven-day pace is flexible. The completion checklist measures whether the five outputs exist; Navio does not issue a credential, school credit, or volunteer hours.
Last reviewed August 13, 2026.