Claire Wu
LinkedIn Role Model
How can Chinese-Immigrant parents and their Canadian-born children find common ground in decision making, to determine the child’s future pathways?
LinkedIn Role Model is a family-oriented career planning tool for high school students. It contains a set of educational tools designed to open up discussions between Chinese-Immigrant parents and Chinese-Canadian children on parental expectations on future trajectories. Learning modules formulate a common ground between the two perspectives, giving the child tools to negotiate their future and allowing for parents and children to build potential pathways together.
Insight
The current career planning course in Ontario holds little consideration for children of Chinese immigrant families who may have specific parental expectations to consider and uphold. For many, the passion they want to pursue after high school is not always supported by their parents. By designing a system that takes into account familial expectations, we create space for important conversations to take place in order to help Chinese-Canadian students bridge their ideal future trajectory with their parent’s expectations.
Idea
LinkedIn Role Model is a learning platform implemented in Career Studies, a mandatory course for Grade 10 Secondary students in Ontario. It brings parents and children through three stages: Discover (getting to know the self), Empathize (understanding the other’s perspective), and Explore (envisioning various futures together), in the form of virtual and physical learning modules. The activities open up discussion between Chinese-immigrant parents and Chinese-Canadian children surrounding values and parental expectations, in hopes of helping them find common ground, creating more understanding between the two perspectives, and giving the child the tools to negotiate their future.
Impact
My project allows Chinese-immigrant parents and Chinese-Canadian children to sit down and discuss their values in order to agree or compromise on the child’s future trajectories. The learning modules seek to strengthen negotiation skills for Chinese-Canadian children, create a deeper understanding between parent and child, and create new spaces for the relationship to grow.
Biography
As a designer and a performer, community and collaboration are very important to Claire. She believes in the power that emerges when space is made for people to share their personal stories. Her designs are driven by the complexities of human relationships—observing the interactions that take place between people, and investigating the "whys" behind the choices they make that ultimately shape their life experiences.