On Thursday, March 14th, 2020, Morgan was scheduled to hold its third Career Day. It was supposed to be held in various rooms throughout The Morgan School. Career Day consists of five different career clusters. Sadly, however, Career day was canceled because of the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

One career cluster was arts, audio and video, and graphic design. The presenters would have been a theatre owner who works for Kidz Konnection, Laura Anastasio.; a photographer for Mags Depetris Photography, Maggie DePetris, creative director for The Visual Brand, Robert King.

The second cluster was health science which was to be represented by an EMT/ firefighter for the Clinton Fire Department, Mike Brotz, a veterinarian for Shoreline Animal Hospital, Dr. West, and a medical technologist from Middlesex Hospital, Cami L. Astorio.

The third career cluster was trade/skilled work which would have been represented by a hairdresser, plumber, manufacturing engineer, and a Lincoln Tech representative.

The fourth cluster was STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math). The speakers for this cluster were the President of Bausch Technologies, Technical Director/Executive Vice President at Kenyon International, Systems Admin ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) /CRM (Customer Relationship Management)Inventory Systems Controller, and an ESPN Stats Analyst/Researcher.

The final career cluster was human services and the speakers were an occupational therapist and a behavioral specialist. These are all people who were willing to give up time in their busy days to talk about their occupations and to teach the next generation about the available opportunities.

Months before the scheduled career day, guidance sent a survey to all of the students to find out which fields they might want to pursue. Based on the results of the survey, the guidance counselors generated a list of the career clusters that best met the interest of the students.

According to guidance counselor Myriah Rodowicz, the career cluster with the most student interest was the arts, audio, and video, graphic design cluster with 110 students voting for it. This is about 32.5% of the students. The next cluster with the most student interest was health sciences with about 100 students or 29.6%.

For the first time, Morgan students would have the opportunity to learn more about the trade/ skilled worker cluster. The school wanted to showcase other careers that might not necessarily require a four-year college degree. This cluster may appeal to students who are interested in attending a trade school or entering the workforce directly after high school.

Mrs. Rodowicz said the overall goal of Career Day is “to expose students to as many careers during their high school career” as possible. She also explained that “Students don’t know what they don’t know so they don’t know if something could be really interesting if they’ve never seen it or have been exposed to it”.

The recent coronavirus outbreak is very serious and caused Morgan to cancel many events that took a lot of time to prepare. Read about last year’s career day in John Inglis’ post. It is very unfortunate that the Career day was cancelled but it was necessary due to the safety of the presenters, faculty, and students.