Golden Apple: Forestview Students Participate in Reverse Job Shadow

Five hundred students at Forestview Middle School didn’t even have to leave campus to learn about 16 different career clusters.

“What that job looks like, what the path of education would look like to get those kinds of jobs, and just give them a basic day in the life so the kids can walk away with a better understanding of what a career in that industry might look like,” Junior Achievement District Manager Amy Gray said.

Students took time in their social studies class to start a career interest inventory and then put those ideas into action for the reverse job shadow.

“These folks do a marvelous job of taking what we doing in the walls of the school and really making it applicable to real life,” said Forestview Middle School Principal Jon Anderson.

It’s during an important time of exposure and discovery for the eighth grade students.

“We don’t expect kids to know what their future will hold as a 13 or 14 year old – most of us as adults know that is just not realistic,” Gray said. “At the same time, we want to give them a better understanding so that when they are going into high school, they aren’t going in blind.”

Even though the job shadow took place at school, there were still plenty of hands-on experiences.

“It’s exciting. You can see the interest and they light up when they actually get to do it, they see how easy it is and how creative they can be with it, so it is a neat drill,” said Eric Makowski-Budrow, a CLC Fire & EMS Program Manager. He was working with students on how to properly bandage and tape a wound.

“I think I would do it in the future if I had the chance to,” said student Adam Cox after working on the EMS activity.

Students were able to test out many careers with 26 volunteers from a variety of industries.

“It is very special to us that they are coming out to show us what they do for daily life and giving us a little glimpse of how work fields are,” Cox said.

No matter the career cluster, the students now know that they have options.

“It is really nice because it gives me a feeling of knowing more of what I’m going to do,” said student Haley Gould. “It’s just easier to do it with your friends than to be doing it alone kind of feeling like you don’t know what you are going to do because you can talk about it with your friends.”

And better yet, they got to talk right to the professionals.

“If we don’t get them excited early, they might not be able to make the choices they need to make in high school and potentially college classes to get that career,” Makowski-Budrow said.

An event like this gave them lots of choices as they head to high school and beyond.