Halstead elementary Holds Career Week

By BRITTANY FHOLER
Cove Leader-Press 

Hettie Halstead Elementary School’s nearly 400 students explored close to a dozen different career options during the first ever Halstead Career Week held the week prior to spring break. 
The brainchild of Halstead’s Social Emotional Learning Facilitator Tiffani Peoples, Career Week featured four days of career exploration for grades kindergarten through fifth grade. 
The students selected their top choices of possible career options prior to Career Week and were divided into three groups- going to the library, the gym or the music room depending on their selection during their Specials period. 
On Monday, students explored the careers of an Army Pilot, a police officer/EMS personnel or teaching. 
On Tuesday, students explored dog day care, HVAC technician and crocheting. On Wednesday, students learned about journalism and newspaper reporting as well as careers with Chick-fil-A and H-E-B. Thursday ended Career Week with presentations on firefighting, nursing and lifeguarding/Parks and Recreation. 
“The purpose of the career week was to expose students to a variety of job choices that they could have at different points in their lives with different levels of education,” said Peoples. “I really wanted my students to learn about all the options for jobs. Students hear a lot about being doctors and lawyers, but those are not the jobs that everyone has. I wanted them to learn about H-E-B and Chick-fil-A which are great starter jobs for students in high school.” 
Last year, Peoples organized a Career Day but decided to upgrade that to the whole week this year. 
“I wanted them to have a chance to hear about the careers in depth,” she said. “The format was that students got a chance to fill out a survey for each day. They picked which career interested them, and they would get to hear a 45-minute presentation about that topic as opposed to just 10-15 minutes of a bunch of careers. I actually had some students in my office when I was planning, and I asked them what they would want to see, so I did my best to reach out to the places that they had asked for. I also wanted to make sure I got careers that required just high school all the way up to a graduate degree.” 
Peoples said that she hoped Halstead’s students felt inspired to purse a career in their passion after Career Week. 
“While they may not have all wanted one of the jobs presented on, I hope that it got them thinking about what they would want to do and how they would need to go about that,” Peoples said. 
The most requested career choices were Army pilot and Dog Day care, Peoples said. 
Lt. Tatum Perry is a pilot, flying Blackhawk helicopters as an Army Reserves officer. 
Perry said she joined the Army Reserves after she graduated from college where she played Division I Soccer. Growing up as a “military brat” with her dad as an active-duty Cobra pilot in the Army, Perry said she knew she wanted to fly Blackhawk helicopters. 
Perry shared about her journey to becoming a pilot with Halstead students last Monday, focusing on the different paths available and encouraged students to take their schooling seriously. She also shared about the discipline and grit needed to be a pilot. 
“I’ve always loved inspiring and really teaching and developing the future, because children are the grassroots. This is the grassroot level of a future pilot, a future doctor, or when I coached soccer, I coached the grassroots level [soccer player],” Perry said. “Being able to really be at the beginner level and make that positive impact in their lives, I believe can steer anyone from making a decision that would take them to a different outcome than if they weren’t exposed to something like a positive influence like an Army aviator.” 
Perry said that one of the teachers share an interaction with her where a student was expecting to see a male Army pilot and was surprised to see a woman. She said that she wanted the kids to know that it doesn’t matter their sex or ethnicity, it’s about wanting to do the job. 
“Like I said in one of the younger classes, it’s whatever you choose in your mind,” Perry said. “I was like, ‘I’m going to be a Blackhawk pilot,’ but I said it. I put it in stone internally, and I did it, and now I’m like, ‘Okay, what’s next?’”
Staff Sgt. Summer Styles, also in the Army Reserves, showcased the other side of the Army Reserves, including the civilian side. Styles is a signal support systems specialist as well as a supervisory staff administrator on the civilian side. Styles’ son is a fifth-grader at Halstead, and she is on the Parent Advisory Council, which is how she found out about the Career Week presentations. 
She said she thought career week helped bring attention to the specifics of the jobs people do, especially the parents of students. The students can go home and mention what they saw at school and open the door for a conversation. 
“This is the stage where you fall in love with snails or trains or aircraft, and so this is going to bring them to middle school…and where they’re going to end up placing themselves,” Styles said. “I want them to focus on school and see what they can do instead of things and people that distract a lot of the time.”
Alexis Reveile was the school nurse at Halstead last year. After she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in nursing, she became a couplet nurse (who takes care of both mom and baby) at AdventHealth. She returned to Halstead last week with a fake baby and different items used to take care of newborn babies to show students what her job entails. 
“I love seeing all of the students before and then getting to show that I still get to take care of kids, just in a smaller size, so it was good,” Reveile said. 
The baby doll, swaddled in hospital blanket, was a big hit with the kids, especially the younger ages. Reveile said the boys surprised her by being so interested in the baby and listening to their heartbeats with the stethoscope. A lot of students showed their own knowledge of babies, from having baby siblings, by holding the baby the correct way and making sure to support the head, she added. 
Fifth-grader Julie Battenfield attended the EMS presentation on Monday, the Dog Daycare presentation on Tuesday, the journalism/newspaper presentation on Wednesday and the lifeguard presentation on Thursday. 
“It was really fun. It was cool that we got to learn about different things, and we can have an idea of what we want to do when we grow up, and we might find new ideas. 
Battenfield said she really enjoyed Career Week, but the Dog Daycare presentation was her favorite. 
“I want to be a dog trainer,” Battenfield said. “I love animals, and I feel like animals should have someone who should take care of them 24/7 and teach them how to be more civilized.”