Earn cash as you plan. Get a $20 gift card for every 200 points with The Knot Rewards
Wedding Woes
*Barbie*
member
middle school kids and mentoring
in Wedding Woes
I have been working with Junior Achievement for the last couple of years in different mentoring programs.
I'll be going to an event tomorrow where kids (8th grade, i think) will be able to talk to us about education, career paths, salaries, etc. Set up is job fair style, so and i'll be manning a booth for a few hours. With my background (education and work experience) I am in a good place to discuss STEM careers and education, commercial/business careers, and some jobs that require a 2 year degree or skilled trades (plumbing, electrical, plant operator, mechanic, welder). There will be a lot of other companies, so i can always refer people to other booths if i don't have any background in what they want to know. I did this event a few other times in the last ~year, so I have experience, but I can always be better prepared.
Questions for WW:
Is there any career/education advice you wish you had received as a teen? If you were in my shoes, what do you feel is the most important message that they teens can get? Did you ever receive poor advice from a mentor/are there topics i should avoid?
I'll be going to an event tomorrow where kids (8th grade, i think) will be able to talk to us about education, career paths, salaries, etc. Set up is job fair style, so and i'll be manning a booth for a few hours. With my background (education and work experience) I am in a good place to discuss STEM careers and education, commercial/business careers, and some jobs that require a 2 year degree or skilled trades (plumbing, electrical, plant operator, mechanic, welder). There will be a lot of other companies, so i can always refer people to other booths if i don't have any background in what they want to know. I did this event a few other times in the last ~year, so I have experience, but I can always be better prepared.
Questions for WW:
Is there any career/education advice you wish you had received as a teen? If you were in my shoes, what do you feel is the most important message that they teens can get? Did you ever receive poor advice from a mentor/are there topics i should avoid?
Re: middle school kids and mentoring
I personally wish that schools had told us that it's okay to take some time and figure out what you want to do. Also when you do, look around at the market. Does that market require you to be bilingual? {my city does} If so, look into that language to help make yourself more marketable
I really could have used encouragement to job shadow or talk to someone about "a day in the life of a _____" to see if I was even interested in that thing. I thought I was going to be an architect with zero idea of how that happens or what they do all day.
I was a good student, but I think the advice I a lot of my friends could have used was "your grades really start counting in high school so don't fuck up."
The district tomorrow has a higher percentage of lower income homes, so scholarships and skilled trades are very popular topics. I'll be doing this again in our district in Feb, but the demographic is a little different.
Actually one of his coworkers was biomed engineering, and decided to change her career. He swears she's one of the most amazing devs he's met!
Trades are also good. Idk about your area, but here a lot of the older gen is retiring and not a lot of people are going into trades to replace them
I think for young people the most important thing to get across is DO SOMETHING for your education, post high school.
I also think there is too much emphasis on the "only path is going to college". For me, college was a perfect path. But that isn't true for everyone. If college doesn't sound like a "fit" or is too intimidating at the age of 18, then go to a trade school. Especially for the skilled trades @*Barbie* mentioned in her first post.
It's a shorter educational path, as compared to college, with in-demand work available. There is SO much opportunity to make really good money!!!! I do not understand why more people don't tread down that path.
What I'd tell kids is don't be afraid to work in the boondocks for awhile, and you might have to. I think the problem with a lot of people who complain there are no jobs is they aren't willing to work at the bottom where no one wants to be for a few years. I got a job (I have a bachelors) straight out of college because no one wants to go where we moved. A coworker moved there from the east coast, partly to do something different, but partly because she'd worked in the industry but never in that field, so she moved somewhere where they were willing to take someone with no experience.
I have a cousin who got a teaching degree. The big communities in his state always have more teachers applying than positions available. So he applied for and took a teaching job working in a tiny town where no one wants to go. It was easy to get a position fresh out of college. He'll work there for a few years to get experience and then get a job where he wants to be.
Alo ol do you have any sort of game/gadget that can pull them in? It may be too late for today, but a spinning wheel with questions and a prize seems to be a big draw whenever I go someplace. Or something they can manipulate while you talk to them.
no trinkets allowed per JA.
Since we got really short notice for the events this week, the photos were out, but it ended up being more of an opportunity to talk to the kids.
We did have the handouts from last year that gave a job, salary range, education or training needed, and some fields where there were job opportunities.
I'd say that I met 5 or so kids today that were interested and engaged - they had some idea of what they might like to do, and wanted to learn more. Out of ~500, that's not much, but at least it's better than nothing. My partner (a mechanical engineer) seemed to be pushing everyone to mechanical engineering ("look how much money you can make!") - where i was focused on giving a broad spectrum of opportunities - e.g. "you don't have to go to college, you can go to a trade school or get an apprenticeship and make serious money as a welder." or "if you like science, and go to school for 2 years you can work as a lab technician or a chemical process operator - and if you do that for a few years and want to go back to school for a bachelor's in engineering, your company may be willing to pay for it." or "you could get an engineering degree but never work as an engineer - like me - it's a selling point for companies because they know that you're a good problem solver and critical thinker." I also stressed getting a mentor/job shadowing as they went into high school and were thinking about if they wanted to go to college or trade school - try to get exposure and experience in a field that interests you to find out if that's something you want to do for a long time."
I appreciate the feedback. I'll be doing this again in early 2018 for my daughter's district, so will continue to use the suggestions.
Now that I'm thinking about it, there was none of that when I was in school. Except for the military.
The military came and talked to my classroom about their opportunities in both the 5th grade and the 10th grade. In fact, in 10th grade, we were all forced to take the ASVAB. Which is basically a military aptitude test. It is also given to new enrollees to help determine what job they are going to be assigned.
Sure enough, two years later as I was a graduating senior, I got calls out of the woodwork from military recruiters. Praising me on how well I did on the ASVAB, they'd love me to join the (insert military branch), let's set up an appointment to talk. Blah-blah. Blah-blah. Military recruiters, smh. The "hard sell" salespeople of the U.S. gov't, lol.
In high school, we would have college days. Where different colleges would set up booths and encourage juniors to apply with them.
That would have been really nice to talk to people from different professions in high school! Maybe I would have chosen better, lol.
Last time I did one of these the thing that I know I touche don that a few teachers brought up w/ me later was me talking about relationships w/i work--apparently pointing out that my job is made reasonable to do by the custodian and admin--and man, do I make sure I"m on their good side-was like amazingly new news for some of these kids.