BEVERLY — Superintendent Suzanne Charochak and Director of College and Career Readiness Julie Ferrara have announced that students at Beverly Middle School and Beverly High School recently participated in the District’s annual Career Days.
This year marked the 15th annual Career Day at Beverly High School. The program stared because of an action research project Ferrara was in the process of completing when she was a guidance counselor. It asked the question, “What is missing at your school that you can make an impact on?”
“I chose Career Awareness as an objective because we really did not have a lot of activities for students
around this important standard. We had plenty of college advising going on in our Guidance Department, but career planning/readiness was not on our radar. So from there, Career Day was born,” expressed Ferrara. “I had the help of another colleague, Danielle DiCarlo, and several parents who were part of our PTSO at the time who joined a planning committee that I formed. We created the blueprint for Career Day that still exists today.”
Prior to the Career Day event, all BHS juniors choose their top two career clusters from the 17 National Career Clusters. In their third year of high school, these students have completed many career awareness and exploration activities with their guidance counselors since middle school to help them decide which clusters to choose for this event.
From there, they were assigned to two 45-minute presentations in classrooms that included 2-4 guest speakers from local companies, organizations, schools, hospitals, and more, that are currently working in fields that fall into the Career Cluster categories.
Students listened to the speakers’ presentations during the Career Day on Feb. 16, giving them an opportunity to ask questions about speakers’ daily job tasks, projects, skills required, and education needed to attain a career in their field.
Approximately 70 companies from across all industries were represented at the event.
Beverly Middle School eighth-graders participated in the 2nd annual BMS Career Day on Feb. 29.
Similar to the BHS model, BMS students in Grade 8 are assigned to their advisory classroom for one 45-minute guest presentation period. During this time, guest speakers from a variety of Career Clusters speak to students about their careers.
Grade 8 students are just beginning to learn about Career Clusters with Guidance Counselor Maggie Lilley, and also have had less career awareness/exploration opportunities compared to those in high school. For this reason, mixing the speakers up provides a broader range of career awareness exposure for these students.
Approximately 50 speakers attended the BMS Career Day.
“We are fortunate to have a wonderful relationship with parents and community members who willingly join us for these events,” said Ferrara. “Some speakers, like Jessica McGrath, an English teacher at BMS, have been speaking at every Career Day at Beverly High School since 2009! Career Day is very near and dear to my heart and I am so proud that we have been able to give our students these career awareness opportunities for the past 15 years.
