Fair Offers Teenagers A Look At Career Options

A thousand students got a real eye-opener at Riverside High School’s Career and College Fair last Thursday.

At the fair, 60 college recruiters and professionals talked with students about their futures. Six hundred Riverside students, a couple hundred Deer Park students, and high school seniors from all points north attended.

“All high school students need to be exposed to different career options,” Riverside High career counselor Kathie Hansen said.

“Students might think they want to be a doctor and be rich, but they may not want to stay in an office all day or give what it takes to go through medical school.”

Students spent the day going from class to class, hearing people talk about different opportunities.

At a class about careers in psychology, Riverside sophomore Erin Weathers learned that if she pursues that field, she will have options ranging from working with schoolchildren to working with elderly people.

Danielle Dunn, another Riverside sophomore, realized she could have a career in law enforcement after talking with a policewoman at the fair.

Ryan Daley’s mind was full of the 500 fields that a military career would open to him.

Most students spent some time climbing in and around a military helicopter parked on the playground.

Others were more interested in jobs they could get immediately.

Jeff Clem, manager of a retail store, advised students to take seriously any applications for jobs.

“If you have a stack of applications, go back to your car and drop them off,” Clem said. “You should make the stores feel like you really want to work for them.”

Some students decorated cupcakes in a workshop designed to show them what it would be like to be a pastry chef.

Even while drawing icing lines on top of a cupcake, Eric Custer, a Riverside junior, wasn’t about to give up his hopes of becoming a chemical engineer.

“I have an idea of what I want to do, but I thought I should check out all my options,” he said before biting off half the cupcake.

“A lot of kids think of baking as just something they do at home,” Riverside home economics teacher Ellen Moe said. “But you can get paid for it.”

Cosmetology done right

Several students from the Spokane Skills Center placed in the semiannual Inland Empire Cosmetology Association competition held at the Ridpath Hotel last month.

Jolene Louie won for the fingerweaving competition and placed second in a making a model look like a storybook character. Chastity Austin won the evening makeup competition.

Molly Evans placed second in both men’s and women’s haircutting.

The Skills Center students are the only high-school-age competitors in the semiannual competition.

A taste of advertising

Students in Mead High School’s marketing class got a taste for a real live ad campaign while helping the Washington Food Policy Action Center design its “Start Your Head - Eat Breakfast” campaign.

“They learned about how a campaign develops, and it empowered them to be perceived as customers, which is what they are,” said Christy Porter of the action center.

No one has ever targeted a breakfast-eating campaign at high school kids before, she said. So Mead students helped identify how to do it.

Mead was one of six Washington high schools and the only East Side school to participate in the planning. The campaign will reach into 12 states.

Mead students helped identify magazines through which the campaign could reach kids. Magazines that Mead students picked were “Snowboarding Magazine”, “Sports Illustrated”, “Guns and Ammo” and “Sassy,” Porter said.

MEMO: Education Notebook is a regular feature of the North Side Voice. If you have news about an interesting program or activity at a North Side school or about the achievements of North Side students, teachers or school staff, please let us know. Write: Education Notebook, North Side Voice, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210. Call: 459-5484. Fax: 459-5482.