“Try lots of different things. You never know what you might like.”
-McPolin Elementary parent, finance career, and PCEF board member Katie Macc
An investor, an engineer, a lift operator, and a ghost writer all walked into a classroom. Nope, not the start of a funny joke, but the start of a fun afternoon at Camp Moose learning about careers from McPolin parents during PCEF-supported Afterschool.
Finance
Ms. Katie talked about finance, and explained how her company works together to decide which businesses to invest in. She used a lemonade stand as an example of entrepreneurship to help students understand great ideas don’t always get a “yes” in business and have to say no sometimes. Math is an important subject for her job, and teamwork is important, too. When asked what her favorite part of her job is, “Saying ‘yes’ to great ideas and helping meaningful businesses grow.”
Katie’s advice, “Try lots of different things. You never know what you might like.”
She noted, “You don’t have to have just one dream. Interests can change, and that’s OK.”
Engineer
Mr. Robert brought a high-speed camera from his company. It can capture millions of images per second, which was very interesting to everyone in the room. Kids were challenged to think what moves that fast. They answered, “Spaceships?” “Animals?”
As an engineer, math and science were his favorite subjects in school and talking to a lot of scientists studying fascinating things, “I have to be a good listener.” A student asked, “What’s the most challenging part about your job?”
“Choose something you enjoy and stay curious. Being willing to learn and not know everything yet is part of the job.” he told students.
Lift Experience
Mr. Gary shared the importance of safety in his job with lift operations at Park City Mountain.
“Can you think which is the most important button?” he quizzed the class, showing a poster of all the buttons on the control panel of each lift. “The stop button,” they all responded.
Gary shared a story of acting quickly to help a kid who slipped from the chair land safely on an air bag, and reminded kids to speak up on the mountain if they see something wrong.
He said, "The best part of the job is quiet mornings high on the mountain and the flexibility of working two days a week to be free to do other things.”
Ghost Writer
Ms. Abby writes books for people who want to write books that don’t want to write them themselves.
“Who here likes to read books?” she asked, seeing a strong showing of hands. “I also like to read books. There are common elements that all books share like the title, table of contents, characters, the setting, and the plot.”
A teacher asked, “What advice would you give to kids if they want to be a writer?” Abby answered, “Read all kinds of books so you have a sense of what you like and what you don’t like. And, once you get older you can start to see how different authors have different writing styles.”
“The more you read, the better chance you have of improving your own writing,” she told the class.
A special thank you to McPolin parents Katie Macc, Robert Anderson, Gary Page, and Annie Tucker for sharing insight into your careers, advice, and sparking the curiosity of young learners as part of enrichment in Afterschool. PCEF donors support Afterschool, offering access to quality programming that works for working parents.
