In hopes of inspiring students, OH’s Student Services Department hosted a week-long exploration of career opportunities in Illinois through presentations and guest speakers this past Sept.
“This is the second year in a row that we’ve done a Career Week,” said OH Counselor David Mattes. “There have been some state requirements that have been in the making, which we thought a Career Week would help to satisfy.”
The state requirements in the making are the PaCE framework, which, according to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission includes “types of experiences and information a student should have in order to make the most informed decisions about college and career planning.”
For OH students, this translates to Career Week. “All students in the future have to go through some career planning and some very focused career programming related to this PaCE framework, and we thought that the Career Week was the best way to satisfy that for all students,” Mattes said.
Yearly, seniors take a survey on future careers or colleges they’d like to attend. The board decided they’d try to present the most picked ideas and use those for career week if possible.
“The careers we [showcase are] based on senior exit survey information. All seniors take a senior exit survey, [and] based on the different fields that they’re interested in going into, we try to select careers that are relative to that,” said Mattes.
Presenters at Career Week included beauticians, representatives from colleges such as the University of Illinois and Waubonsee Community College, phlebotomists and woodworkers. However, the OH Student Services Department do plan to expand on that.
“The Waubonsee College [information] really interested me,” said OH senior Aiden Baez. “I think it’s a really good investment. Especially going into common classes first and then going into the majors of what you want,” he added. “I would’ve liked to see more interior design careers or fashion careers. I feel like that would’ve been interesting [to me], too.”
Throughout the presentations, the OH counselors also conduct trivia, and if students answer correctly, they won prizes, such as candy or a small souvenir. The goal was that students will pay attention to the presenters, retaining the information in general or helping themselves.
“The trivia was suggested by a member of our Social Studies Department last year, and then a way to kind of keep students engaged,” said Mattes.
As well as keeping students engaged, the goal is that students will also take away from this experience that Oswego provides good information and support for post-high school planning.
Regardless of the support, not all students took advantage of the opportunity. While Baez expressed that he felt many students paid attention, but there could have been more. “If they were stricter with phones, students probably would have paid more attention.”
Although OH has a phone policy, it still leaves students with opportunities to be on them.
“I know this might be greedy, but I think every day I would hope the students take away one thing,” Mattes emphasized about the information offered each day during Career Week.
He continued, “One thing that they wanted or one thing that can be useful for them, each of those days, whether it would be, ‘Oh, I’m more interested in it now’, or that ‘This is a resource in a community college that I wasn’t aware of that I might be able to take advantage of’, like that had opened their eyes to potential paths that they did not know existed.”
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