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Area students explore potential careers
Published November 21, 2009
National unemployment broke into the double digits last month, but one group of future job seekers isn’t thinking about the harsh reality of the job market, they’re just wondering what they want to be when they grow up.
On Friday, hundreds of students in seventh through ninth grade from across the Hill Country attended the Kerrville Chamber of Commerce’s annual job fair at Schreiner University.
“I’m not really sure what I want to actually do,” said Cole McWilliams, of Harper Middle School. “I liked the cop station though. I wouldn’t mind being a police officer.”
Students from nearly a dozen different schools across the area participated in the event, exploring a variety of potential careers. Representatives from the legal, medical, communications and various other fields were present. There also were representatives from local colleges and universities.
“What we’re trying to show them is that there are alternatives to the traditional four-year degree,” said Rhonda McGinnis, chairwoman of the chamber’s education committee and member of the Tivy career tech department.
“There are many students at this age who say, ‘I want to be a doctor,’” McGinnis said. “But that dream, for financial or other reasons, may be out of reach. But we show them there are ways to be in the medical field without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The state of Texas requires high schools to begin career education programs in ninth grade. McGinnis says that by having a career day for middle school and ninth grade students, that gets the students thinking about their futures.
By thinking about their futures, McGinnis hopes that students will explore different elective course to figure out what they might want to do after they graduate.
“Better they explore now while it’s free, rather than waiting till they are in college and it’s costing them money each semester or each class,” she said.
The career day fits into an overall career education path. Students begin considering possible career paths in middle school and early high school grades, McGinnis said. Then they focus on job shadowing and other advanced career education options in 11th and 12th grade.
“Hopefully by the time they’ve graduated high school, they’ve had six or seven years where they’ve been thinking about what they’d like to do afterward,” she said.
But many of the students at Friday’s career fair seemed far from settled on a job path.
“I’ve seen a couple I like,” said Brian Zimmermann. “I think being a lawyer would be neat. But they also had a booth with the newspapers and being a reporter might be cool, too.”
Whatever career the students decide to pursue, McGinnis said the point was to show them professional jobs are available locally.
“Hopefully we can show kids that there are professional jobs right here in their hometown, they don’t have to leave to find them,” she said.
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