Syracuse Latin Students Gain Work, Life Experience through School ‘Jobs’
$300 for rent$12 for a bus pass
$50 for utilities
And, of course, there’s the monthly cell phone payment, and regular purchases like groceries.
These are all things 6th grade students at Syracuse Latin have become familiar with juggling, thanks to a new career readiness project aimed at helping them learn about the working world they will encounter as adults.
6th grade Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers Mr. Ralston and Ms. Davis taught students about what it looks like to get a job: from the application process and interviewing to time management, completing timecards, and of course, maintaining a budget. To bring these concepts to life, they created a month-long project through which students had the opportunity to earn a salary through completing work throughout their school, which they participated in during class time.
Students could help with stapling or filing papers, stocking books in the library, cleaning, working with younger students one on one, or helping teachers as needed. Each day, as they completed their classwork – and ‘clocked in’ at their school job – they received a stamp on their timecards. At the end of the week, if they clocked in each day, they earned their salary.
Career cards selected at random gave students their salary: they served as plumbers, childcare workers, restaurant cooks, mail carriers, judges, electrical engineers, bus drivers, electricians, bank tellers, physicians, and more.
“I’m an Electrical Engineer,” Tahir Edmond explained. “My salary is $120,000, which sounds like a lot! But I’ve learned that you have to be organized or things can fall apart. You can spend almost $200 on groceries if you’re not careful… things are so expensive. This project will help me for when I have a real job, because I’ll know how to prioritize what I spend my money on. For example, I learned that I can buy food precooked, but if I cook it myself, I can save money!”
“I’m a Physician, and my salary is $208,000,” Violet Perillo shared. “But I learned that even if you make a lot of money, you still have to budget. If you don’t pay attention, you can lose money. You have to plan and organize, and it helps to write things down. This is definitely going to be stuff I do in real life – deciding if I want to rent or buy a home, take the bus or buy a car. These skills will be helpful!”
Ms. Davis said that was the hope of this project – helping students learn skills that can help them one day in the not-so-distant future.
“This has gone so well,” she shared. “Each student has timecards and a schedule for their overtime jobs. Students had the opportunity to choose jobs and then gave written interviews about strengths, weaknesses, and what contributions they could bring to that staff or class. They have done so well going to their jobs. Some students have been teaching their peers scratch coding as part of their overtime jobs, and that has worked out well. The students love learning from one another and helping the younger grade levels. We produced this idea to put everything the students learned in our Career Readiness units into somewhat of a reality. We’re giving them as close to real life experiences as possible. I also thought about what would have been helpful for me when I was a student – I would’ve loved an experience like this!”
We’re proud of these Syracuse Latin scholars for becoming #SCSDCareerReady at such a young age!
