05/04/2006

Pros give Coventry High students a look at their work

By: Jessica Selby , Daily Times

 

Coventry High School students took a break from their books yesterday afternoon to learn from industry professionals. Health science, human services, natural resources, finance, engineering and technology, education and training, marketing sales and service, hospitality and arts and communications are just a few of the fields that had representatives on-site to chat with the students about their careers for the school's biannual career fair. "Every other year, we have a career fair at the school," said Donna Hutson, the school-based coordinator at Coventry High School. "We invite business people from the community to come to the school to introduce the students to their particular career field so that they can get ideas about the responsibilities that come with the job, the type of salary they can expect and what type of education they need to obtain a position in the field." Leslie Voccio and Julie Greenhalgh, both RNs at Kent, said they were busy throughout the morning answering a variety of questions about a career path in the medical industry asked by the many students that stopped by their booth. "Oftentimes we will have a lot of students that will approach us and say that they want to become a nurse, so we arrange for them to come and visit the hospital through the Volunteen Program," Voccio said. "It isn't until they arrive and get introduced to what really goes on at the hospital that they realize how many other options there are for them to choose from, like becoming a dietician, a physical therapist or a maternity specialist." Ally Parente and Erica Raeecis, both seniors at CHS enrolled in the EMT course at their school, dropped by the Kent Hospital booth to obtain information about the possibility of enrolling in a nursing program. "We learn basic paramedical principals in our EMT course, but we were hoping to learn more from talking with the professionals here today because this is what I want to do for a career," said Parente. In addition to nursing, there were a variety of careers that the students were able to learn about. Some listened as a licensed therapeutic massage therapist described the new program being offered at the Community College of Rhode Island while others were offered the opportunity to slide on a pair of "beer goggles" to see what members of the Coventry Police Department have to deal with when pulling over an intoxicated driver. "We had 36 to 40 different venues here for the kids to browse through," Hutson said. "We give ninth graders the chance to use the choice program, which is an interest profile program we offer here at the school, to build a basic idea of what the students are interested in. Many of the people that are here today were invited based on the results of those profiles." "With this being Law Week and everything, I thought for sure we would have gotten a lot of no's but we didn't," she said. "The response we got from business people was surprisingly overwhelming and I am just thrilled that we were able to give the kids this opportunity." "The thing is, many of them need this information to develop a game plan for next year when we have Career Day," she said. "On Career Day, the kids get to select three different professionals that they want to sit in and listen to for 30 minutes. They use a lot of the information they gather the year before to choose what type of career they want to learn more about."