One of the most challenging decisions to make as a high schooler is choosing your plan for after school. As students, we often get stuck and lost. Mr. Marinaro felt this way when he went to high school. Now wants to help students with his new idea: The Future Path Program. The program exposes students to new opportunities that they didn’t know existed by bringing in volunteers within the community to talk about their careers.
Last year, Marinaro had the idea pieced it together over the summer. He created this program so students would have knowledge of all career opportunities to assist them with their future. The Future Path program is run by the guidance department. Mrs. O’Beirn has been a huge help throughout the planning process. She mentions, guidance is still in the early stage with the vision and planning, but they just need the people for this idea to be executed.
Mr. Marinaro relied on his personal experience as a high school student to design the program. High school was very hard for him. He said, “I couldn’t really see a connection with what I was supposed to be learning and how I would apply it to a career, so I didn’t take it very seriously.” Mr. Marinaro came up with idea because he is very passionate about helping people to find their pathway.
A takeaway from his last job at Meriden High School was the Lunch and Learn program. This was where professionals would come in to speak with students about their career paths during the student lunch waves. The Meriden students reported that they took a lot of meaningful information from each session. Programs like Lunch and Learn enhance student knowledge. Marinaro said, “exploration and exposure to opportunity is a big part of the equation.”
Future Path will be run by a few volunteers who will come to help students learn more about their future career paths which they are interested in after high school. These volunteers will be from town or even at our Morgan School. They will answer any questions “like a panel” and students will listen to what their job entails on a daily basis. This program will be run Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday any period of the chosen day. It is going to be flexible to whoever is volunteering their time to come in. The panel will be running for 56 minutes and will likely be located in A collab.
The best part about this program is that student will learn more about jobs that they didn’t know existed. Mrs. Zdunczyk, another guidance counselor in the department, said, “It is going to help spread awareness because kids have no idea about certain careers.”
However, the program won’t be successful without student involvement. A current obstacle encountered for this idea was students did not fill out the form sent to their emails. Mrs. O’Beirn stated, “Very few people decided to take that survey and that was actually a massive obstacle, it will help tremendously with planning.”
Mrs. O’Beirn asked that students take the survey sent out via email, as she will be sending out a new one in the coming days.
