South Side Having Students Learn More About Colleges and Career Options

By Montserrat Nino (9)
montserrat.nino@fwcsstudents.org

May 1, 2024

At South Side High school students were able to spend their English period at the career fair to learn more about colleges and find an interest in any careers that were there. 

 “I thought the career fair was really neat to see the kids get to talk with vendors and different colleges and look at jobs that they might be interested in, I really appreciated that they had an incentive, kids were able to get to as many vendors as possible and my students got really competitive with it,” English Teacher Emily Mossoian said. 

An incentive is “a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something.” This is because students had a challenge to see who can get the most vendor signatures.

“I think it helps kids start to solidify whether or not they want to go to college or start getting a job or they would want to do a trade, college is not for everyone and so it’s good for kids to know to know that maybe college isn’t for them and that’s okay because they can go into trade school or the workforce,” Moissoian said. 

Trade school is a vocational school which is a postsecondary institution that offers job-focused training by teaching students the skills they may need for a specific career. 

“The big thing for me as an English teacher is that students leave during the class period so that gives me a day to not teach them which is what I don’t like. I would’ve changed it to a different time or day for students so I can still teach them,” Moissoian said.

During this students were able to leave English class and go to the vendors. Students who had English first or last were able to leave in a different classroom. 

“When I was there everyone seemed nice and it was really fun to go,” Elissa Colin (9) said.

There were about 15-20 stands where you could learn more about the college and career. Each one selling something like Chapstick, pencils, etc. 

“I think the benefits to this is you get to see what career you are interested in and you get to learn what you may have to do in order to get the job you want and you get to ask questions about it too,” Colin said. 

In a career fair many students find out what college they would like to go to or they find a career that they would want to pursue in the future. 

“I think I should’ve asked more questions and I should’ve visited more colleges and careers,” Colin said. 

You are able to ask any question you want to these people and they will always give you an answer. 

“I liked how there were a lot of options in the career fair so if you didn’t know something you could go and ask them and they would’ve had an answer and they were nice about it too,” Emily Toledo (9) said. 

Everyone at the fair was so nice and ready to help anyone if they had a question. 

“I feel like a career fair helps people explore more options, they can open their mind and figure out something else they might’ve like to do in life,” Toledo said.

In a career fair students can have a wide variety of options of colleges and jobs they can go to. 

“If I was in charge of the career fair I would’ve brought more colleges so the students could discover a wide variety of colleges they would like to study at,” Toledo said. 

Colleges at the career fair were limited to only the ones in Fort Wayne.

“I learned a lot of things at the career fair like how the military worked and what the graduation rate was at each college,” Alondra Martinez (9) said. 

Military were also there to see if anyone may be interested in joining them. 

“I think the benefits are trying your hardest to get into a school or job you’re interested in,” Martinez said. 

Seeing school’s acceptance rate and costing can be motivating to some people to work harder. 

“I wished I was less awkward and asked more questions when I was interested in something,” Martinez said. 

When you are in a career fair it’s always best to ask questions so you know if that is something you’ve wanted to do. 

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