(Shenandoah) — Shenandoah High School students will have the opportunity to listen to and interact with several different career paths on Tuesday.
In cooperation with the Davis-Rodgers FFA Chapter, the Shenandoah School District’s CTE department is hosting a STEAM Career Day–featuring panelists, class rotations, and interactions between local businesses and students. Sarah Martin is the CTE mentor teacher and multi-occupations coordinator with the school district. Speaking on KMA’s “Morning Show” recently, Martin says the event is a chance to expose students to the number of career opportunities before them.
“The whole idea is to introduce students to non-traditional and traditional careers that are found in their community and beyond and have them start thinking about ‘after high school, what is my next step,'” said Martin. “So, it’s this wonderful day where we have speakers coming from all over to talk to our students so they can ask questions and broaden their horizons about what’s available.”
Martin says a wide variety of local businesses are on tap to present to students.
“Iowa Corn is bringing down their biofuels trailer so the students can kind of figure out what’s going on at Green Plains, what happens with the ethanol process,” she said. “We also have Shenandoah Medical Center bringing down a whole team to talk to students about emergency medical services to physical therapy, nursing and more–we have medical coders coming to talk to students. I’m really excited because we also have some entrepreneurs that are going to come and talk about what it’s like starting a small business in a community.”
Some of those local entrepreneurs include Jenni Hansen from Paper Trail and Lesley Brooks from Brooks Accounting, just to name a few. Also new this year, Martin says, will be a panel of former students and other “college-age” individuals in school or the workforce.
“Some of them are graduates from Shenandoah High School, some of them are students from Iowa State University who have a variety of internships they’ve been involved in, and some people went from the classroom to the workplace,” Martin explained. “So, I’m very excited to see all these different students come back–technical careers, professional careers, and people who are still in that college age and still searching for that career that’s going to be their final destination.”
Martin emphasized the importance of providing a launchpad for students into a career, some of which may not even exist yet.
“I’m an educator and I knew kind of what I wanted to do as soon as I left high school, but today, most of the careers that these students are going to experience have not even been thought of, invented, or explored yet,” said Martin. “So, it is very important to not only give students that background but also to give them a launching pad to think ‘what is possible’ or ‘what is next.'”
The STEAM Career Day runs from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the high school. Interested businesses can still contact the high school office at 712-246-4727. You can hear the full interview with Sarah Martin below: