Stand Up for Students – A Teacher’s Guide
Stand Up for Students!
Stand Up, the organising arm of the youth union movement, and the Young Workers Resource Centre want to educate secondary school students around the country about their basic employment rights and responsibilities.
Help us educate young people about:
- Employment agreements
- Unions and union membership
- Trial periods
- Precarious work
- Leave entitlements
- Discrimination
- and more!
We run these workshops because we passionately believe in the need to inform and empower young people as workers. The NZ School Curriculum does not cover Employment Relations education in a meaningful way. Our students spend 13 years in the school system and most of them go straight into the working world without ever participating in a single lesson on employment rights and responsibilities. Coupled with the fact that these (sometimes complex) employment laws change every few years, it is no wonder that our employment courts are full of personal grievances and messy situations. All students are entitled to this education.
A good understanding of employment relations is absolutely essential, not only to young people, but to people of all ages. There are few certainties in life, but one is that you will most definitely spend a good portion of your life working and a knowledge of employment rights and responsibilities will lead to fewer disagreements, and empowered and productive workers who work together with businesses to achieve great results.
Hosting a Presentation
So you have agreed to host a presentation, awesome! What comes next? Well, the process from here is up to you and your Stand Up volunteer. You need to decide where these presentations can fit in your programme.
Some ideas:
- An assembly presentation followed by a lunchtime workshop
- A workshop to replace a normal spell.
- A workshop during a study spell or pastoral session.
In each case there are some important things to consider.
1.) Your presenter will be experienced in worker rights issues but will not be a trained teacher. You may need to help them if there are problems with student behaviour. You should not leave the presenter alone with the class.
2.) We have found that sessions are most effective when the teacher takes part. Please feel free to contribute to the class.
3.) Make sure that you allow for enough time for the presentation. The full deal should take at least 50 minutes.
4.) Please share any feedback with the presenter and with Stand Up (via our email nzstandup@gmail.com). This is vital for fine tuning and adjusting our presentations for future.