by Karly Monson

On Career Day, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 97 community guests came into our building to share their expertise.  On that same day, 135 AHS students were reported absent.

AHSneedle Editors present two views of what these numbers say about Career Day and AHS students.

On Thursday, students explained their absences from Career Day, many saying they did not attend because they already knew what career they are planning on majoring in.

Is Atlantic High School listening to this statement made by students?  Do educators realize that Career Day may not meeting students needs?  The majority of students absent were juniors and seniors (44 and 55,) and maybe this was because of the fact that they had experienced Career Day two years before and decided that this year they had better things to attend to.

My sophomore year, I attended Career Day and after the first two sessions called my mom to ask her to get me out of school because it was so boring. The information given by the presenters was informative and gave me a closer look at what the career was like, but there was no interaction with the students by the presenter.  Instead of showing students what the job was like and how some duties were executed, the presenters frequently  just talk to the students for 40 minutes and ask for questions at the end.  I don’t know about others, but if something doesn’t catch my attention in the first 5-10 minutes, my mind tends to wander and I will not listen until I hear the bell ring.

This year, I did not attend Career Day because I was at Iowa State University on a college visit.  I did not plan this date of the college visit to correspond with Career Day, but even if I had been in town, I still probably would not have attended.  Instead, I would have stayed at home and worked on school work that needed more attention, like many students did.  Senior Taylor Berns said she stayed home from Career Day and worked on her yearbook pages that are due next week, and senior Jenny Hohenberger stayed home and worked on scholarships.

Senior Kate Fulk said she went to Career Day because “she had to for basketball practice.”  This was another popular trend for students who participate in a winter sport.  According to the coaches’ handbook, “participating athletes are to be in school, on time, ½ day, the day of an athletic event and will be excused only for sickness or injury that requires the attention of a doctor.”  If students participating in a winter sport had not shown up for Career Day, coaches would not have allowed them to practice that day.

Low interaction between presenter to student throughout the day is another reason why students were not interested in coming to Career Day.  “We sat there and listened to them talk.  One guy said 10 minutes into the presentation ‘Are there any questions?’ and he was done.  If there goal is to get something out of this, they need to be more hands on.  I honestly would’ve rather gone to a normal day of school,” said Fulk.

Instead of the presenters just sharing information about their job to students, maybe they should bring in example elements from their job to the students so they are able to have a hands-on approach with the day and get more out of it.  The information brought about the jobs by the presenters is great, just the way it is presented and how it is not interactive with students is what needs work if more Career Days will happen in the future.  The school should give the presenters more than just a list of information to cover, and encourage them to interact with students.

Senior Casey Ihnen said, “I understand that it looks bad as a school when that number of students miss an event like this, but when you look more closely at the problem it becomes pretty obvious.  When most of the careers at Career Day are actually just jobs, it is hard to become interested.  On top of that, when the option of FBI and careers that cater to virtually non-existent portion of the student body, people start to take the day less seriously.  Last time we had this event almost all of the careers I chose were not offered because too few people signed up for them.”

School-to-work coordinator JoAnn Runyan said that the reasoning for not offering every career that was on the form is because of the “low number of students being interested in the career.”

Seniors Hannah McLean and Hannah Nelson suggested that if Career Day was set up like the college fair, it would create a greater student interest.  “Each business person could stand at a booth and students who want to learn more about the career could ask them questions,” said Nelson.

Another suggestion was to differentiate the way in which students attend Career Day.  An idea would be to offer Career Day to the freshmen and sophomores, and have a different option for the juniors and seniors, such as a workshop teaching how to apply for college and scholarships.

Also, students were never given an in-depth explanation of what Career Day was.  Juniors and seniors already knew because of previously attending Career Day, but the freshmen and sophomores had no idea what the day would be like.  Students were just given the directive to fill out a computer-generated survey in their seminar class and pick six careers that interested them.  No information was given on what Career Day was, why we were having it, and how the day would happen.

“If (135) students were saying that they didn’t want to come to Career Day and could convince their parents to call them in sick, there is clearly a problem with Career Day, not with the students.  I think that blaming the students for the awful attendance is not going to fix the problem.  We really need to look at WHY the students aren’t willing to participate in the event and see what we can do to fix that,” said Nelson.

I would say that students are telling the school that there needs to be some type of change with Career Day from the situation this year.  Obviously a statement was made, and to not have it occur again in the future, something needs to change.  Whether it is input from students or a whole new plan for Career Day, hopefully AHS looks at the situation that happened and lets students know that they have listened and are ready to take action.