Career Day 2011 falls on April 5 this year, a day when students will have the opportunity to explore possible jobs they are interested in.
The surveys that students completed back in the fall about their top three professions they would like to learn more about are currently being used to make the students’ schedules for Career Day. While this day is a relaxing and insightful one for students, it takes a long and tedious process to organize, according to those involved.
“We actually start planning it back in the fall; it really does take almost the whole year,” college and career coordinator Bonnie Sheikh said. Before the compiled list of jobs was even sent out to students, a speakers’ committee was held to find speakers from the parental and professional community that were willing to come in and present their trade.
For the 2009 Career Day, students filled our their choices on Naviance, and the results were then compounded manually into schedules. This year though, the school wanted to go completely paperless with the process.
“This year we wanted to filter [the schedules] through Aeries so we could dump the database from Naviance into Aeries,” Sheikh said. The selection process was made much more efficient this way, as 80 percent of the students who responded received their top three choices when the computer matched their schedules, Sheikh said.
The rest of the 20 percent present quite a job for Sheikh and the rest of the parent volunteers from the CCC, as they have to manually go through each individual schedule request that was not matched 100 percent to the students’ choices and provide substitutes for the unavailable classes.
“I try to give them their next possible and similar match,” Sheikh said. Students who fall in this 20 percent category will not get their first choices for some of their three requests, but they will still be put in the same job arena, such as a student who wanted a veterinarian being transferred to a zoologist.
Every Career Day, different trends can be identified concerning the popularity of certain careers offered. In the past years, a surge of interest was seen in science domains such as bio and nanotechnology, Sheikh said.
“Some of the topics over the years have dropped off because they’re just not popular with the kids anymore, and they reflect changes in the economy,” Sheikh said. “We try to keep current.”
This year, Sheikh said that the two Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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st popular career choices were FBI and chef, while astronomy lagged with only 27 requests. Digital animation this year will be presented by Pixar animist Steve McGrath, who worked on the movie “Shrek.”
Career Day will consist of a modified Monday schedule, with shortened classes throughout the day to make time for the three, 45-minute career presentations. Sheikh emphasized that Career Day is a mandatory school day, where attendance will be taken, so students will receive a cut if they miss or switch classes.