For medical professionals, firefighters, lawyers, pilots and law enforcement professionals, the job market is going to get tougher, but they’ve got a 10- to 15-year advance warning before these youngsters are competing for their jobs, so there’s time to prepare.
Students and teachers at Gladys A. Abraham Elementary celebrated Career Week Friday by dressing as a person in their favorite profession and parading in front of the whole school.
Principal Lisa Forde introduced the program, urging students to consider how they need math and reading to prepare for and use in their selected professions.
Serving as emcee, teacher and “farmer” Ashley-Ruth Bernier brought out the participants by career preference, which included doctors, a mechanic, soldiers, a carpenter, models and small business owners, to name but a few.
“I want to be a fire chief,” said third-grader Kymani Williams, who was well turned out as a St. Croix fireman.
Williams said he was inspired to be a fire chief by his grandfather who had made firefighting his profession.
Students took the exercise seriously, gaining information about their future career choice.
Current fifth-grader and future “pediatrician” Jakalah Meade said the profession called to her because she would be able to care for children, but she understands early the importance of a meaningful career choice.
“If you don’t care you can’t be the person you want to be,” Meade said. “You don’t feel yourself and you don’t feel like you belong in that place.”
But the students weren’t the only ones dressing up, with some of the teachers trying on different careers for the day, including Lurlene Gerard who dressed as a National Guardsman and demonstrated perfect pushups to the applause of all the students.
The teachers dressed up on their own, Forde said.
“If it is going to make an activity better, they participate, they’ll give 110 percent of their time and energy,” Forde said.
Forde said you can tell when a program is a success “when the teachers, parents, faculty and staff all come together to make every educational experience positive,” Forde said. “This activity couldn’t have come together without a partnership between school and home.”
