CAC sparking kids at early age

MONTROSE - LCEDG Workforce and Community Specialist Becky Newton has been on the job for about four weeks.
In that time she’s been exposed to a large group of area students engaged in creative career exploration. Two weeks ago she had eighth graders from Fort Madison, Keokuk and Holy Trinity Catholic.
On Wednesday about 75 students from Central Lee’s 8th grade came out to the Lee County Career Advantage Center, for an afternoon of hands-on exploration with company’s like Clymax Molybdenum, Huffman Welding & Mfg., International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Southeastern Community College, and Fort Madison Tourism.
The Hawks came out to the center later due to testing that was going on at the school during the previous event.
Newton said the value of the program is to help stimulate curiosity with the students and create an opening to a potential career whether that means education beyond high school or potentially entering the workforce after high school.
“We believe that once you get to high school, 11th or 12th grade you kind of have an idea of what it is that you want to do. So we think exposing them to these different types of career paths at a younger age is equally important so that they can have a better idea of what there is to offer, especially in Lee County,” Newton said.
“There's plenty of things that not a lot of people know about. So exposing them to different things to spark their interest and get their gears turning about what they might be interested in long term - I think this is the perfect age to start that.”
She said the tourism presentation helped serve two purposes. To give kids a chance to think about those quality of life benefits of the communities they live in, but also to allow tourism officials to see what kids think about amenities in the area.
“What she's doing is actually interviewing them and asking them to write down their favorite place to eat, favorite place to play basketball, or where they hang out in the community,” Newton said.
“It’s giving us information of about what kids like to do, and do we have enough of what's going to engage the younger population and keep them out of trouble, keep them engaged in healthy activities. It’s good for us to know what the youth are doing these days”.

LCEDG Executive Director Emily Benjamin said the center has been monitoring numbers of students who have chosen to come out to the programs that have been put on, but data about the impact of those sessions is still to come because the first group of eight grade students put through career exploration sessions three years ago are still in high school.
“We just don’t have a strong way of tracking initial data yet, so the students that came out the first year that we did these creative experiences, will be 10th graders this year and we'll see them again the following years as 11th graders,” Benjamin said.
“So far we’ve just been tracking numbers and haven’t gotten into the data yet.”
Newton said she’s just getting her bearing with the programming but said the program is well received by those who present to the students as well as the students themselves.
“I would imagine it is a success or we probably wouldn't keep doing it,” she said.
She said the real value will be in post interviews with students who have gone through the complete cycle as 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades and what career paths they have chosen.
“It will be valuable at that point seeing what they were interested in as an eighth grader versus which companies they're talking to that may be hiring them on the spot or conducting those interviews. That’s how I can see gauging it at this point.”
The value at this point for the industries and other presenters is in helping move the needle on keeping people in the area after high school, but also opening up potential labor pools in the near future.
“I think it's a little bit of both,” Newton said.
“ I think that they see our vision of sparking these kids at this age. They see kind of the long game of how we can develop our workforce further and it starts at this age. So I think that's part of it, but I really think that any opportunity where they can showcase to any audience what they're doing in the community is good.
“A lot of these jobs are really cool so being able to show that off to students I think is a huge part of it. We are so lucky with the support that we have here we don't have to twist any arms. Everyone is very willing and happy to participate.