What prompts a 6th grader to declare a career choice?
Career Fair at John Beck Elementary, funded by a Warwick Education Foundation grant. 80 sixth-grade girls and boys watch four science-oriented presenters talk about their jobs. And one boy discovers what he wants to be when he grows up.
“A chemist,” he volunteers, fresh from the presentations and already imagining his place in the world of work.
Will he stick with this vision of his own future? Change his mind several times before college is over? Or find himself in a yet-to-be invented biomedical job?
When you’re good at something—let’s say science—you tend to like it; when you like a subject, you tend to be good at it and pursue it.
What’s the right choice?
Vocational choice is less about finding the right job and more about the right job finding you.
Knowing such things exist as “chemist” or “cardiovascular specialist,” “nurse” or “professor of physics” might be how the process begins. Hearing about a job’s details could be when a tug in a particular direction first exerts its magnetism. And that, in turn, leads to decisions as to which courses to take in school, subjects to master, and what colleges or tech schools require.
Which is why our Foundation makes events possible like the “What in the World” Career Fair at John Beck Elementary.
And why the school district provides opportunities like internships for high school seniors in local companies.