Aurora’s Hall Elementary School hosted a Career Day for 3rd-grade students on March 6. Hall Elementary serves approximately 575 students from Pre-K to 5th grade, 40% of whom are multilingual learners. A bilingual 3rd-grade teacher organizes this event. Typically, she invites current 3rd-grade parents to showcase their careers in a career fair format, and this year, she partnered with the high school to include high school CTE seniors. They identified underrepresented career areas and worked with the CTE teachers to recruit bilingual seniors. Seven bilingual seniors represented a variety of career sectors, including cybersecurity, CNA, auto, culinary, machining, graphic design, and others.
Each senior represented their career area in the Hall library, and 86 3rd-grade students attended the fair. High school students communicated in both Spanish and English, a highlight for the 3rd-grade students.
One unexpected highlight was that CTE students made connections with the other professionals in attendance. For example, a student representing CNA was seated next to a Hall parent working in research at Northwestern University. Throughout the afternoon, they talked about the student’s career aspirations, and the parent offered to connect her to medical professionals at Northwestern. Additionally, a law firm offered to host a CTE high school intern in the future.
The afternoon was a great example of how a community can come together to show students what is possible – it was a celebration of both culture and career.
