Most adults don’t expect seventh and eighth graders to know what they want to do when they grow up. But it’s certainly not too early for these students to explore the possibilities and give serious thought, if not curiosity, to what they might like to do some day.
That’s the message delivered by roughly thirty volunteers presenters, many of them parents of East Lyme Middle School students, who participated in the school’s first Career Day on Thursday, May 29.
About 500 students took part, attending three different presentations put on by professionals in a broad variety of fields, from self-employed and small business owners to corporate types.
“We sent home a letter with report cards,” said Linda Meyers, one of three guidance counselors at the school. Several parents stepped up. The counselors rounded out the list by asking a handful of active community leaders and business people.
The presenters ranged from First Selectman Paul Formica to Eric Parker, broadcast journalist with Channel 3 TV, an East Lyme graduate, to professionals in law, nursing, human and veterinarian medicine, pharmacy and pharmaceutical research, as well as engineering, law enforcement and military service. There was even a casino dealer. Several small businesses, from running a bicycle or auto repair shop to hairdresser and personal trainer, rounded out the career fields.
Despite the diversity in career fields and different educational requirements, many of the adults stressed common themes: Start with good basic educational skills and plan for continual, life-long learning, regardless of the field.
Shelley Pettit, registered nurse who specializes in trauma care, came off of her night shift Backus Hospital Emergency Room, still in hospital scrubs.
She had students on the edge of their chairs with tales what kinds of medical emergencies can come in through ER doors. All too often, there’s someone injured in a fight, shot or knifed. There are people with unknown conditions or who lack of medical insurance, so ER is their first stop and hardly in time for preventive care.
There’s the occasional baby delivery. Pettit recently handled one of those in a car in the parking lot, but said she felt more comfortable with “code blue” and other trauma cases that she has trained for.
“There’s such a spectrum – from school nurse, to what I do. You can do anything with nursing and go anywhere with it. There are just so many different opportunities,” she said. “You can specialize in hospice, in home care. You can work part-time, work nights, traveling. It’s great for people with children or without.”
Several of the students enjoyed talking cars with John Santos, owner of JMS Automotive in Waterford, who has worked on cars ranging from everyday makes and models to restoring a collector-quality Ferrari.
“If you had told me in 1984 when I started working that I would have someone come into my shop and tell me the TV in their car wasn’t working….,” he said as an example of how fast the automotive world is evolving and the demands put on professionals in auto repair and maintenance, especially in the secondary market.
“Street cars are a lot more complicated than, say, NASCAR racing cars, which don’t even have head lights or air conditioning, and still have carburetors, instead of fuel injection,” he said.
Santos started out pumping gas, worked his way up through other shops and started taking continuing education and specialized training in his field. He has been in business for himself for eight years.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, so I’ve been going to school in this field for 25 years, as well,” he said, not counting high school. In addition to community college, he went to General Motors School in Dedham, Mass.
Santos told the students he still takes classes at least six weeks every year.
“In the seventies, if you were an auto mechanic, that was like a default job,” he said. “It’s not any more. If you want to keep up, you’d better plan on continuing to go to school to keep up with the new stuff.”
Art teacher Anita Pringle said it was interesting to see the interests and questions of students, including a fair number of girls who selected the auto mechanics session.
“Many of them are gaining an appreciation for math, which they might not have thought was important after they got out of school,” she said. “That, and the technology aspect.”
Steve Morrissey, who has traveled all over the world fixing flat tires as an Olympic bicycling mechanic, put the kids to work replacing inner tubes and tires while telling them what it is like to set up and run a small business. In a few years, those able to prove their bike repairing skills could garner a summer job at Niantic Bay Bicycles, the shop owned by Morrissey and his wife, Kim.
“I’m going to be a cop,” Kevin Renshaw, eighth grade, who asked a lot of questions of Sergeant Bruce Babcock, East Lyme. “I’ll get to help people, and I’m a very good people person.”
Babcock, the former East Lyme D.A.R.E. officer, has done a variety of jobs on the police force over 24 years, from field and general training to patrol cop, canine unit and detective. He graduated from Syracuse, NY on a football scholarship before attending the police academy.
“By the time you’re 18, most of you won’t know what you want to do, but I encourage you to go to college. It helps you learn to manage your time, prepare for exams and organize yourself,” he said, adding that he expects police work to require at least a two-year college degree in a few years.
Babcock described how out of 100 people who might try to go into police work, only about 25 finally make it through the multi-step process and screenings. First, there is written entrance exam, physical agility and strength tests. Next come character, psychological and background checks and a medical examination. Then there are weeks of schooling and final exams at the Connecticut Police Academy.
“You have to have a lot of common sense. You generally have to like people – that’s what the job is all about,” he said.
Although the students wanted to hear about high speed chases, accident scenes and weapons, Babcock told them the tools he uses most often on the job are his ink pen and the field notebook always tucked in his back pocket, to jot down information and to generate reports.
“An extroverted person who likes people and has the ability to write, you’ll do well in this field,” he said. “Further your education so you can organize information and write well.”
“He told us the best part of his job was getting to work with people,” Renshaw said. “The high speed chases were the scariest part. He said after you were done with it, you realized how dangerous it was.”
Although this is the first formal career day at the school, it certainly isn’t the first and only career-oriented exercise for students. Carol Keemon, one of the life skills teacher, helps eighth graders prepare for high school and beyond.
“This goes in concert with a program already in the life skills room, where students research a career and do personality assessments,” said Dave Costa, one of the guidance counselors. “This puts it into a visual context, why we do what we do. All together, it makes sense.”
The school plans to hold a career day every second year.
“We’ll learn from what careers weren’t represented and we’ll build on that for future programs,” he said. “The teachers were our volunteers, and did an extraordinary job.”
Trink Nguyen, seventh grade, chose to topics of health and medicine. She heard from a psychiatrist, pharmacist and emergency room/trauma center nurse.
“I feel like it gives me a head start. They gave me a good idea of what the career is and what I should know about before I enter that field,” Trink said. “Some of them, it’s a lot of years of college.”
Her friends Shealie Peno, eighth grade and Jaimee Szupiany, seventh grade, agreed that all of the sessions they attended were interesting.
“Career day rocks,” they said as they dashed to their next classes.
For more information, see www.eastlymeschools.org