A career fair was held by the AVID 11 class for the AVID 9 and 10 classes in the learning commons during fifth period last Friday.
Each student made a website and brought two promotional products, posters and pamphlets, to present the career they chose to research at the start of the semester. Students in the AVID 9 and 10 class asked questions about and took notes on the careers that interested them of the 18 booths available.
“I truly like how everybody has such a different opinion of what they want to be,” Vivyan Gastelum (10), an AVID 10 student said. “There’s a lot of diversity in people’s jobs, and they all have a different inspiration. It’s really good to see everybody actually wanting to find passion [in] what they like, instead of just going in for the money.”
Sevey Morton (11) echoed this statement.
“I feel like it’s always great to see what other people around you are interested in and to see how diverse all of our careers are because all of us have chosen something super different,” Morton said. “There are other people going through the career that you’re not sure you want to go for or not sure you can go for, and [it just shows] you that there are other people around you who are willing to also take that big risk.”
Visitors had the chance to explore more specific fields within their desired career paths.
“I always wanted to work in the nursing field … and this girl named Lucy was presenting about dermatology, and I’m thinking about pursuing that too, because it sounds really interesting and that pay is high,” Gastelum said.
Not all students found careers that appealed to them, however. According to Maxim Galkin (9), an AVID 9 student, although some of the presentations had “good ideas,” he would “think of [his] own career.” As a freshman, Galkin said that he would likely figure out what he wants to do by junior year.
While viewers had the chance to learn about new careers, the presenters themselves also learned about their careers through the research process
“I learned how much school [dermatology] is and how difficult it is to really be a dermatologist,” Lucy Gonzalez (11) said. “Even though [it’s obviously] hard to be a doctor, to even get matched into dermatology is really hard, so it’s just gonna be a challenging thing that I didn’t know was going to be that challenging.”
Wendy De Leon, AVID 11, AVID 12 and Math Support teacher, organized the event. This is De Leon’s first year teaching AVID out of the two years she has taught at the school.
“From what I know in the AVID program, it’s really common in AVID for students to research their careers, but they don’t always present like they did at the career,” De Leon said.
According to De Leon, AVID has more of a “free curriculum” that allows teachers to choose different activities so long as they include all the aspects of WICOR (writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization and reading)
“I was just looking for a project that would get the students to think about their future careers and professions after high school,” De Leon said. “A lot of what we do in AVID is college and career related. So, my goal is to get them to a four year university, but sometimes they’re stuck on where, what they’re going to study [and]what they’re going to do with their degree.This project was a nice opportunity to kind of tie it all in together.”
Sofiya Yangirova (11) considered the career fair to be a success because it puts “a thought in their brain [of potential careers]” regardless of if students were engaged.
“I think it’s beneficial, because you talk to people who actually research or sometimes, [though] not in our case, have experience with the actual career,” Yangirova said. “I think if it’s student to student, it kind of makes sense, because it’s like a connection.”
