Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Meet John! He has a very interesting job at a place called Historic England. His job title is Stakeholder Engagement Advisor, which is a big way of saying he helps different groups of people talk to each other and work together.

Here is what John’s world is like:

John’s job is all about building relationships.

• Meetings: He meets with many different people to find new ways to work together.

• Planning: He helps plan big events that bring lots of people into one room.

• Writing: Some days he sits at his desk and writes long letters or short, snappy words for posters.

What skills does he need?

To do his job, John uses three main “superpowers”:

1. People Skills: He talks to all kinds of people. Some know everything about history, and some know nothing at all, but he has to be kind and helpful to everyone.

2. Writing: He has to be good at writing for different reasons, like making a sign for a big event.

3. Curiosity: John says he is “nosy” in a good way! He loves to ask questions and think about how other people might feel about the work Historic England is doing.

How did he get this job?

When John was at school, he really liked History and English. He went to university to study English Literature (which means reading lots of great books). Before he worked with old buildings and history, he worked for arts groups and even the NHS.

John loves that his job lets him be curious. He enjoys asking lots of questions and working with experts who know amazing things about the world.

Note: John mentions working at the NHS, in the UK, this is the National Health Service which provides healthcare.

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Meet Sarah, a real-life stone detective and explorer! Sarah has a very cool job- she is a gemmologist, which means she is a scientist who has special training to identify different types of gemstones. She is also a lapidary, which is a fancy word for someone who cuts, shapes, and polishes stones to make them into beautiful jewellery.

Here are some amazing things about Sarah and the special stone she studies called Whitby Jet:

• It’s Fossilised Wood: Whitby Jet isn’t just a regular rock; it is actually fossilised planks of wood that have been stuck in the cliffs for millions of years. When the sea washes the cliffs away, the Jet breaks off and the tide carries it onto the beach for people to find.

• More Mysterious than the Moon: Even though Jet is found right here in the UK, Sarah says we actually know less about Whitby Jet than we do about rocks from the moon! She is doing a lot of scientific research to help everyone understand it better.

•Sarah says her job is like being Indiana Jones because she gets to have adventures. She explores old, abandoned mines and travels all over the world, to places like Arizona and Turkey, to talk to other people who love gems.

• You don’t have to be a grown-up to start being creative. Sarah made her first piece of jewellery to sell when she was only 11 years old! By the time she was 14, she was already selling her crafts at fairs in York.

Sarah doesn’t think there is a big difference between being a scientist and being an artist; she uses her imagination for both. She even went to university to study geology (the study of rocks) because she loved stones so much and wanted to learn their secrets.

Think of a gemmologist like a “Nature Detective.” Just like a detective uses a magnifying glass to find clues at a crime scene, a gemmologist uses science to look deep inside a stone to find out its secret history and where it came from!

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Meet Tasha! She is a doctor who works in a very busy part of the hospital called A&E (which stands for Accident and Emergency).

Tasha has a very cool job where she helps teach other doctors, nurses, and students using something called simulation. Here is what her day looks like:

• Practice with “Super Dolls”: Tasha uses special mannequins that are like very clever, life-sized dolls. These mannequins can talk, blink their eyes, and even have a heartbeat that Tasha can change to show different medical problems.

• Learning is Fun: People come in to practice helping these mannequins while being filmed on a camera. Afterward, everyone watches the video together to chat about what they did well and how they can improve. It is a fun and interactive way to learn how to be a great doctor without having to worry about making mistakes on real people.

• Teamwork and Jokes: Tasha says that teamwork is the most important thing in a hospital. She loves working with her friends and enjoys a bit of “banter” (which is a UK word for having a laugh and joking around) while they help patients together.

• Every Day is Different: If you like doing the same thing every day, A&E might not be for you! Tasha loves her job because she never knows who she is going to see or what exciting things she will do next.

How Tasha became a doctor? Tasha didn’t have any family members who went to university, but she became interested in medicine because she spent a lot of time visiting her grandparents in the hospital when they were poorly. When she was 10 years old, her grandad started calling her his “little doctor,” and she loved the hospital so much that she even used to pretend she had a hurt foot just so she could go in for an X-ray!.

Now, she works with a big, fun team of people who have become her friends for life.

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Meet Annabelle: The History Hunter

Annabelle is a student at Durham University and a volunteer archaeologist. This means she spends her time exploring the ground to learn about the past.

What happens on a dig? When Annabelle goes to work, she does something called “test pitting”. It is hard physical work that involves:

• Digging: She has to clear away grass and use shovels to move earth.

• Hunting for Clues: She uses a small handheld tool called a trowel to scrape away dirt carefully.

• Sorting: She has to be very clever to spot the difference between a simple stone and a special object that needs to go into the “finds tray”.

From Windsurfing to Digging Annabelle loves being active outdoors. She actually started sailing when she was only three years old and began windsurfing when she was nine! She is now such an expert that she is a senior windsurfing instructor at Kielder.

She didn’t always plan to be an archaeologist. She studied history for her GCSEs, but then forgot about it for a while. After she finished her A-levels, she took a year off (a gap year) and joined a dig near her town just for something to do. She ended up staying for 8 weeks and loved it so much she decided to study it at university.

Why does she do it? While some people just like finding cool objects, Annabelle loves the story behind them. She enjoys figuring out who lived there and what the world looked like a long time ago.

To understand what Annabelle does, imagine trying to read a mystery book, but the pages are buried underground and you have to dig them up one by one to understand the ending!

Spark Tees Valley

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Olivia works for the Wildlife Trust as a Wild East Cleveland officer. Her job is to help make places wilder so nature can grow and animals can be happy.

What does she do all day? Olivia has a very busy and exciting job outdoors!

• She plants things: She plants wildflower meadows and hedgerows (the bushy fences you see in fields) to create homes for wildlife.

• She is an animal detective: She monitors animals like bats and hedgehogs to see how they are doing.

• She helps people: She works with the local community and people who own land to teach them how to make nature better.

What skills do you need?

• Strength: Olivia says you have to be very physical and keep healthy to do her job.

• Knowledge: You need to be an expert on animals- knowing where they live, where they come from, and what they eat.

Before she started working with nature, Olivia used to be a pastry chef and she made wedding cakes! She decided she wanted to do something different, so she went to university and did a special training course (called a traineeship) at the Wildlife Trust to get her dream job.

Olivia loves talking to people, but her favourite thing is seeing the cute animals on the land!.

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

If you want to know what it is like to make video games in the UK, let me tell you about someone named Adelaide who does exactly that!

Adelaide is the boss (the Managing Director) of a small, “indie” game studio called Northrak, which is located in Middlesbrough. She has a very exciting job because she does two very different things every day:

• The Business Side: She makes business plans, works with money on Excel sheets, and stays very organised by making task lists for the present and the future.

• The Creative Side: She is also an artist! She creates concept art (drawings of what the game might look like) and UI/UX work, which is basically designing how the buttons and menus look so players can use them easily.

How did she get there? Adelaide grew up in Portugal. Even though she loved art in school, her country didn’t have a clear path to working in video games. For a while, she did other jobs like web design, but she wasn’t happy. One day, she realised something very cool: “if games exist, it’s because an adult does it”. She decided to follow her passion, move to the UK, and start her own career in games.

Why is it a great job? According to Adelaide, making games is amazing because:

1. You can be creative: She gets to express herself through her art every day.

2. Small teams are fun: Because Northrak is a small team, she gets to have a big say in what they are building.

3. Finding “Your People”: Adelaide says she wasn’t always someone with lots of friends, but working in games helped her find a community of people who think just like her and have the same goals.

So, if you love drawing and staying organised, you might want to grow up to be a game developer in the UK just like Adelaide!

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Meet Professor John! He is a scientist who has a very special job helping people stay healthy and happy.

What is his job? John is a Professor of Translational Healthcare. That sounds like a big, confusing title, but it really means he takes clever science ideas and turns them into real things that people can use.

For example, he and his team make:

• Wearable gadgets: These are things people wear every day (like a special watch) that tell them when they need to drink water or take their medicine to stay healthy.

• Special tools for doctors: He makes devices that your GP (your local doctor) can use to find out why someone is feeling poorly.

What is a typical day like? John’s day is always different! He doesn’t spend much time in the science lab because his team of experts are much better at the day-to-day science—he jokes that they are worried he might break something if he goes in there!.

Instead, he spends his time:

• Listening and Talking: He talks to patients and doctors to understand what problems they have so he can find a way to fix them.

• Being Organised: He has to plan everything carefully to make sure his team has all the chemicals and equipment they need to do their work.

Why did he become a scientist? When John was younger, his dad was a mechanic who fixed cars and his mum was a nurse who looked after people. Because of them, John always wanted to solve problems and help people. He always liked Biology and Chemistry in school, and now he uses those subjects to make a real difference in the world.

He loves his job because he gets to work with fantastic people and see how his inventions actually help people feel better.

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Meet Natalie! She is a Senior Game Designer. This means she is like the architect of a video game world- she is the person who decides how the game should work and then explains those ideas to her team.

What does a Game Designer do? Natalie decides on all the “silly little things” you might see in a game, like how a door opens or what happens when you interact with something. Her job involves:

• Writing: she writes down her ideas so that other people can turn them into part of the game.

• Testing: she spends time playing the game to make sure her ideas are actually working the way she planned.

• Helping others: as a “Senior” designer, she helps younger designers learn how to do the job well.

The Tools of the Trade To build games, Natalie uses a special computer program called a game engine. She says that if you think of Microsoft Word as the place where you write school reports, a game engine is like that, but for building video games. It helps her put everything in the right place and make sure the game’s “maths” is correct.

Important Skills Natalie says you don’t need to be a computer wizard right away. The two most important skills you need are:

1. Problem-solving: Being able to figure out how to fix things when they go wrong.

2. Communication: Being able to talk and write clearly so everyone understands your “mad ideas”.

You might have played some of the games Natalie has worked on! She has helped make Minecraft Dungeons, Goat Simulator, and Prison Architect.

Natalie didn’t start making games until she was 30 years old! When she was at school, she didn’t even know this was a job she could have. Before she became a designer, she did lots of different things: she was an IT trainer, she worked in a care home, and she even did stand-up comedy for a few years. She says that having all these different life experiences actually helps her make better games.

The Best Part of the Job For Natalie, the best part of her job is finally seeing her ideas come to life in the game so that people all over the world can enjoy them.

A Helpful Analogy: Being a game designer is like being the person who writes the instruction manual for a giant set of LEGO. You are the one who decides where the secret trapdoors go and how the castle bridge should move, so that everyone else knows how to build the fun.

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Riley has a very exciting job as an apprentice build manager. Being an apprentice is a bit like being a student and a worker at the same time; she spends four days working on a building site and one day at college learning new things.

Here is what Riley gets up to:

• She learns from the experts: Riley follows the professional team around (this is called shadowing) to learn all the skills she needs to be a boss on the building site.

• She keeps a diary: Every day, she writes in a site diary to track everything that is happening and manage the work.

• She checks the work: She does “quality checks” to make sure the building work is being done properly.

• She leads meetings: Every morning, she has a meeting with the people bringing supplies to make sure everyone knows what is going on.

Riley says that talking to people (communication) and working together (collaboration) are the most important skills to have. This is because a building site is like one big team, and everyone has to help each other.

Why does she love it? Riley first tried this job during work experience when she was at secondary school, which helped her decide she wanted to work in construction. She loves it because no two days are the same, she is always learning something new, and she gets to solve challenges.

Spark Tees Valley

In Summary:

Louise has a really cool job called a Community Wildlife Officer. Her main goal is to help people improve their local parks and green spaces to make them better for nature and for the people living nearby.

What Does She Do All Day?

Louise’s job changes a lot from day to day! Here are some of the things she gets up to:

• Solving Problems: She spends a lot of time talking to different people in the community to help them fix issues with their green spaces, like deciding where to put new benches.

• Getting Muddy: She goes outside to do physical work, like planting trees. She once helped move five tons of soil in just one day!

• Using Her Brain: Louise says her job takes a lot of thinking. She has to figure out how to make parks accessible so that everybody can use them.

How Did She Get Her Job?

Before she became a Community Wildlife Officer, Louise did a lot of learning and practicing:

1. University: She went to university to study Marine Biology.

2. Volunteering: She worked for free to learn new skills. She volunteered with the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, where she did things like “dry stone walling” (building walls without cement) and making hedges.

3. National Trust: She went back home to Liverpool for a while and did some work with the National Trust.

Louise says the best bit of her job is working with communities to fix their problems. She loves that she can see the progress she has made and how her hard work makes a real difference.