Sarah Spradling, the assistant director of the Career and Technical Education department, launched district-wide Career Opportunities On Location Days, also known as COOL Days, this January. The program allows juniors and seniors to spend a full day job shadowing local industry professionals to gain real-world career experience.
“The biggest advantage is simply gaining insight and understanding of careers,” Spradling said. “Students can see the work environment first-hand, experience the culture of that workplace, ask questions about required education and training, and learn pros and cons.”
For over 21 years, the district hosted COOL Week for seniors. Last year, the state approved student absences for “the purpose of career investigation,” so the CTE department created Career Investigation Days to align with the purpose. According to Spradling, the name was changed from CI Days to COOL Days because families and businesses in the community associated COOL with supporting career exploration.
“Education after high school can be expensive,” Spradling said. “Gaining clarity as to whether or not a student wants to pursue a career could help families financially, rather than waste money on training or a degree for a career that a student decides they don’t like.”
In the interest form, students identify their program of study, relevant coursework, and interested careers. The COOL Days committee then matches students with opportunities in local businesses. The committee matched senior Avery Teitelman, interested in engineering, with NOV Surface Engineering.
“I wanted to get hands-on experience and know what I should expect in a day-to-day,” Teitelman said. “NOV is an oil company, so we got to learn about their rigs and how the company works. It was cool because it’s a different aspect of engineering than I’m interested in, so I got to explore a different industry too.”
Teitelman and a group of students from other schools toured the facility, learned about the different floors and what each floor was responsible for. Then, they also participated in a meeting where they discussed the company culture at NOV and had the opportunity to ask questions.
“We’re always open to new businesses and organizations [to host] students,” Spradling said. “Our committee will do our best to recruit businesses based on student interest, but some industries like healthcare and computer science continue to be a challenge due to the nature of the work.”
This district-wide program includes businesses from police departments to ATI Physical Therapy to the Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery. Teitelman applied by finding information in the counseling email and contacting her counselor, who then connected her to NOV.
“I would recommend doing this because it gave me insight,” Teitelman said. “I learned about the specific components of an oil rig, and because the rigs are so old, some of the new technology doesn’t fully work with them, so it’s always about what’s most efficient and the whole wear and tear process. It was cool because I learned how merging old and new tech is an important part of engineering, and that’s something I can apply to what I want to do in the future.”
