By: Abagale Elliott
Students at Salem Middle School are exploring the choices before them. There is a career fair happening March 21st for all students to help them with their future plans. This fair will be a great learning experience and all around opportunity for all involved. The teachers and adults get to see what piques the students’ interests and the students get to look at what they might explore deeper when they get to high school.
The fair will be from 8:30-10:30 a.m. and will be in the ROC, the Brick and the new STEAM lab. It will be set up like a science fair with a variety of booths that can be visited. Morgan said some examples of careers that will be featured are finance, nursing, dental hygiene, optometry, physical therapy, INDOT surveying, pastry chefs, military, lab technicians, engineering, firefighting, police officers and retail.
“Students will have a question sheet that they will have to complete as they visit each table to gain knowledge about that career,” said STEAM Director Jessica Morgan, who is organizing the event with College and Career teacher Kristen Bailey. “Some guests will have items on their tables to show students a variety of things about their chosen career. Some guests will have videos to show or equipment to look at.”
She said this is not a new event, but something that was done pre-COVID. With changes in staff and COVID restrictions it made it difficult to get it going. Kids in middle school during the years when they didn’t have the fair still got the lessons that the career fair brings, but they didn’t have the hands-on experience of the career fair. This year will be the first in a while that they do it.
“It is important to expose students to a variety of different careers so they can start to understand how many different options are available to them,” Morgan said, explaining why they decided to hold the event again. “It will also help them try to decide what they want to study in the future.”
There are many career choices out there and exposing students to them can get their mind set on something to do with the rest of their life. A career fair is an opportunity to do so in an interactive way. For two hours the students will be engaged in learning based activities from someone experienced in each field featured in the career fair.
It would be easier for them to get into some careers if they took certain classes or went to Proser in high school. Proser offers lots of job opportunities and training for sophomores and seniors in high school. A lot of the jobs they are learning about now overlap with the options at Proser. Learning now about how to get to a level where they are ready for Proser, the job market or college will make it easier when they get to that stage in life.
Staff members at SCS will be working to expose students to employability skills,” said Morgan. “These skills are great resources to help students learn what employers are looking for in new employees.”
Lifting themselves up higher than the average employee will make building their resumes and interviewing a lot easier in the long run. Being taught how to do new things and build upon the old things will give future generations the building blocks to really achieve success. The career fair should be a great opportunity for all of the people involved. After all, if the new generation succeeds, everyone succeeds.