Collaborative Effort Sets Students Up for Success

SEELEY LAKE – Dressed in ties and skirts, students walked the halls of Seeley-Swan High School Wednesday, March 7. This was a different Discovery Day – it was a Career Fair. Instead of taking students outside the classroom, the community came to them. Students were offered a wide variety of presentations during the morning sessions to learn about different careers options. In the afternoon, they had the opportunity to learn about career readiness and practice job seeking skills.

Seeley Lake Elementary Library Media Specialist Michele Holmes has always had a passion to help equip students for the work force and help them be successful with different jobs.

"From my experience, the sooner students recognize their path or interest, the better decisions they can make on their way," said Holmes. "We are not always going to find jobs but I think there are a lot of volunteer opportunities that can give you a leg up or give you exposure to that career."

Several years ago when the owner of Lindey's Prime Steak House Mike Lindemer asked Holmes if she could help students fill out a job application, she responded, "I can't do that alone but if you are willing we can try to work on that together."

This started a Career Day at Seeley Lake Elementary. For at least five years, the junior high students participated in mock interviews, learned how to write a resume and fill out a job application.

"The feedback I always got from our very willing community members was, 'This is great but we would love to see this at the high school,'" said Holmes.

Last spring the Human Resource Council representative Jake Labke met with members of the Seeley Lake Community Foundation to see about putting together a Career Fair for the community. Foundation board member and SLE Superintendent Chris Stout forwarded the information to Holmes knowing that she had already started discussions with SSHS English Teacher Lori Messenger and Science Teacher Tonya Smith about a joint Career Fair.

"This is something the Community Foundation has wanted to do for the kids for a long time," said Holmes. "We decided collaboration was the way to go rather than having two."

A result of the My Voice Survey taken by SSHS students showed a lack of career planning and career counseling at the high school level.

"As a staff we decided that this year we would focus our efforts on career and job placement for the students as a Discovery Day event," wrote Smith in an email. "We hope the students will gain a better understanding of the careers that they are interested in and some skills that they can take with them when applying for jobs in the future."

All the SSHS students and SLE's eighth graders took a career interest survey. Their results helped identify how their interests could plug into various career choices.

The students took a second survey about what careers they would like to see at the career day. Between the two surveys, the planning committee brainstormed various professionals in a range of careers.

Wednesday, March 7 SSHS Leos Club greeted the community guests providing all the information they needed to get to where they were going. They also provided a lot of other help during the day to keep things running smoothly.

The eight grade and high school students attended three morning sessions about different careers. They had their choice of six different trades; emergency response; medical; engineering; science; education; business, arts; artist/entrepreneur; recreation; computer science; broadcasting/writing; hospitality and cosmetology.

"It evolved so much that instead of one person in the medical [and education] field we had panels," said Holmes who highlighted that they wanted to address all student interests, not just students bound for college.

The two afternoon sessions were skill-based. They included mock-interviews, interview skills, scholarships and internships, personal finance and resume building. There was also a trade show for students to get more information about various opportunities.

The Career Fair was a huge success. Presenters thought the event was very well organized; they were impressed with how engaged, professional and polite the students were; and everyone really enjoyed the opportunity to share their profession with local students. Students were excited to have learned more about careers they were interested in and thought the skills sessions were helpful.

"Honestly, we hoped for a lot but couldn't really imagine the reality of so many great folks from our community and around the state gathered in support of giving students ideas for what their possible futures could contain," wrote Messenger. "Keynote speaker Michael Beers started us off on the path of encouragement to use the day to start conversations about what you hope for in the future and that set the tone great for the day."

The Career Fair will alternate with other Discovery Day topics every two to three years.

"We would rather it continue to have quality rather than quantity in the future," wrote Smith. "It was such a great community event and we want to continue to work with everyone to bring about something that the students will value and that will help them make decisions about their future."

"This would not have been possible without the help of many of our community members--from jumping in to present at the last minute, to spending time creating the meaningful career, job skill and "life" activities for our students, to organizing and funding the food for our career guests," wrote Holmes. "It shows how much our community values our students and their futures."

"We sure want to thank all the folks from the Seeley-Swan community who helped put on the event [especially Gene and Carla Schade with Alpine Artisans and the Seeley Lake Community Foundation, the SSHS Leos Club, and the SSHS Boosters, Cory's and Rovero's who provided the food and refreshments for presenters]. It was a true collaboration," wrote Messenger. "Thanks also to all our students and staff who really jumped into the spirit of the event and carried the day forward beyond what any three of us could ever have done on our own."