High school students often wonder what comes after graduation. Without being required to go to school every day, what do you do? Should you work? If so, where? Should you go to school? For what? Kimball Area High School held their first Career Day on Wednesday, March 12 to try to help students answer these tough questions. Sixty presenters along with students in grades 7-12 participated in the event. “One of our goals in school is to introduce students to more careers. Career day seemed like one way to introduce the students to a variety of options,” said Nancy Bonnifield, business education teacher and career day committee chair. During career day, students picked five career clusters. Bonnifield explained that the day highlighted 21 different career choices. Some of the fields represented at the event were dental, law enforcement, technology/computers, medical, construction, carpentry, professional, cosmetology, military, and educational. Students were assigned to attend three sessions of their choice areas. At the presentations, students heard from a panel of three professionals from the selected fields. The presenters explained what education is required for jobs in their field, what an average day on the job is like, how they chose their profession, and what was the best part of their jobs. At the end, presenters answered the students questions. Presenter Donita Knaus works as a massage therapist. She explained her job to students and offered massages to some of the participants. “I think that career day is great. Some high school students who are interested in massage have already contacted me about my job. These students showed up at my presentation.” Knaus thought that it was great that students had this opportunity to learn about careers first hand. Student-participants seemed to learn a lot at the event, which was the purpose of career day. Student Dani Cin explored her interests in the agricultural, communications and photography/arts clusters. Her top choice was agriculture since she is considering a career as a veterinarian. She chose the other sessions based on her interests, “Communications was very interesting because I like to write and stay on top of current events. My brother influenced me to go to the communications group because he is in the war. I also went to photography and arts since photography is one of my hobbies.” Seventh-grader Josh Cleveland plans on being a lawyer and learned “what some of the people got paid and what they did for their jobs.” Junior Chelsey Fischer used the day to find about about the social work field. “I learned all about psychology and the differences between social work and psychology, which is something I want to go into. [The presenters] told about the different degrees that you need and how many tests you have to take.” Even after hearing about all of the work involved with this career, Fischer still wants to study in this field. Considering everything, Bonnifield felt that career day served its purpose. She said, “One student told me that he changed his mind on what he is going to do for his career based on this event.” Another student told her the day really opened their eyes about what goes on in the career world. The career day committee will host a career day every-other year. At the next event, the committee hopes to include mini-sessions where students can travel to different locations around Kimball or learn hands-on activities. The next career day will be scheduled during the 2004-2005 school year.
