Editor’s note: The story below follows up on a report Port City Daily examined last week on the shrinking presence of youths in North Carolina’s workforce. That coverage is viewable by clicking here.
Eighteen-year-old Paige Keen didn’t see the job-shadowing portal her school offered as much of a choice. For a driven mind like hers, it was an imperative, and in the end it solidified the specific career choice she’d long had in mind.
“I want to be a pediatric surgeon,” the North Brunswick High School senior said Monday with no doubt. “It’s been my dream since I was a little girl.”
And so the recent chance to witness first-hand surgeries on babies ranked easily as one of life’s milestones.
“It clarified everything,” she said. “Right then I knew exactly what I wanted to be. It was amazing. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”
Keen’s experience, made possible through Brunswick County Schools’ (BCS) career preparedness system, generally places her against the grain portrayed in a recently published report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
While its focus was the shrinking presence of young persons in the workforce, it followed a nationwide study that found fewer youths in the last 10 years showing career-mindedness. In North Carolina, the report said, 21 percent of teens and young adults are “disconnected,” meaning they neither work nor attend school. Observers like Action for Children North Carolina say the trend means more persons ages 16-24 will face difficulty finding adequate employment and securing financial stability later in life.
That’s what makes the job-shadowing program so valuable, said Amy Sanders, who heads BCS’s career-ready initiative.
“Job shadowing is offered to juniors and seniors at the high schools and is an exceptional opportunity for students to explore careers,” Sanders said. “Students must apply to shadow, participate in an orientation, complete a post report and submit a thank-you note to job shadow supervisors.”
Roughly half of North Brunswick High School’s job shadowers this year were, like Keen, focused on healthcare careers, Sanders said.
And those are the jobs that pay. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the wages of surgeons and physicians “are among the highest of all occupations.” Citing 2010 reports from the Medical Group Management Association, BLS said general surgeons make a median annual income of $343,958; for internal medicine practitioners, $205,379; for doctors of pediatrics and adolescent medicine, $192,148.
Passions vary in BCS’s career program. Adina Howard, a 17-year-old senior at North Brunswick High School, recently shadowed in the fairly specific field of fashion buying.
“I really didn’t know what I wanted to be until last year,” Howard said. “I started looking for a career path that I would love doing. I like fashion a lot and I started researching it. Fashion merchandising came up and I thought it was perfect for me.”
Through BCS’s shadowing program, she lined up a shift with a higher-end, local clothing retailer, whose manager showed her the store’s databases and how purchases worked.
“I learned a lot,” Howard said. “The manager, she talked to me a lot about buying because that’s what she was interested in at first.”
Now, Howard is planning her senior project around fashion merchandising, for which she’ll try to line up more shadowings.
The program paddles away from the implications the Casey Foundation’s report communicates, with Action For Children North Carolina perceiving the state’s future at stake. “The potential economic and social cost of youths’ lack of access to employment extends well beyond the lives of those young people affected; it undermines our state’s ability to achieve a prosperous future,” said Deborah Bryan, the organization’s president.
There are several factors affecting teens’ and young adults’ access to employment, a significant one being competition from older, well-qualified persons displaced by the recession and settling for entry-level positions to cover the costs of living.
But the report also examined high-school dropouts and recommended programs to keep youths engaged–or to re-engage those who left the system.
Under Superintendent Dr. Tim Markley, New Hanover County Schools (NHCS) implemented a “dropout focus group” formed of middle- and high-school principals, school counselors and social workers as well student support services staffers who work to increase graduation rates.
“For the 2011-2012 school year, New Hanover County Schools had the highest graduation rate in its history at 80 percent,” said Assistant Superintendent for Student Support Dr. Rick Holliday. “The previous year, our graduation rate was 73 percent.”
BCS posted an 84-percent graduation rate in 2011-2012, a 4-percentage-point gain over the previous year. Bob Grimes, assistant superintendent, attributes the improvement–which he projects will pass the 85-percent mark this year–to district programs that help at-risk youths with mentors and monitor their progress in school.
Under one BCS program, staffers meet with parents and students at least once a year to review the student’s four-year plan, transcript analysis and any special circumstances that might affect the student’s ability to graduate.
“Every effort is made to find a solution to keeping the student in school,” said Grimes.
NHCS also offers career-related and technical courses in its middle- and high-schools. Focuses are medical occupations, food services, childcare, electrical trades, construction and more.
“The most challenging task of working with students in the area of career development,” said Sanders at BCS, “is getting them to focus on future goals; however, I am often surprised at how focused and motivated some of the students are.”
Keen, the aspiring pediatric surgeon, said she’s disappointed more students don’t rush to the outlets their districts avail, like the job-shadowing program.
“It’s really sad, because kids don’t realize at our school how valuable it really is,” she said. “It’s just the fact that I was able to see my dream–see a surgery–through job shadowing. If I hadn’t gone through job shadowing I wouldn’t have been able to see anything like that.
“It’s just shocking that kids don’t reach out and take what’s right there for them,” Keen said. “The opportunity that we have is so amazing.”
Contact Ben Brown at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter: @benbrownmedia
