For two full days in mid-February, Aurora Public Schools students kept a local convention center buzzing with career exploration excitement. More than 4,000 students in 8th and 9th grade packed into the Hyatt Regency in Aurora for a massive career fair.
February is Career Awareness Month in APS and this marked the first time the district hosted a career fair for all of its 8th and 9th grade students. The fair focused on giving students opportunities to explore careers they might not know anything about.
The Hyatt’s large conference room was separated into 14 different career clusters, such as Digital Technology, Hospitality and Agriculture. Each cluster was marked by a large white sign and included multiple industry partners just waiting to share unique experiences with the eager students.
Rather than only sharing information about the careers, the clusters offered hands-on learning where students could try out various functions of the career. This approach is called work-based learning and APS has found it leads to increased graduation rates. In the construction cluster, students lined up to sit in a large simulator where they got to see and feel what it’s like to work inside a front loader and fill up a dump truck with dirt.
Ephraim Mitchell is a freshman at Vista PEAK Preparatory and was impressed with all of the hands-on opportunities at the fair. “I’ve figured out how to fly drones, operate some robots and eventually figured out how to operate a loader. I have really enjoyed it,” he said.
Chloe Kapchus was very interested in talking with the industry partners in the Healthcare and Public Safety clusters. With a goal to become a forensic pathologist, the Vista PEAK freshman relished the chance to pick the professionals’ brains. “Some of the questions I’m asking are what grade I can start in and how I can eventually get there and what skills and other careers and classes that I need to take so that I can eventually get into my desired pathway,” she said.
The career fair featured more than 40 industry partners each day and included several heavy hitters in the Aurora community like Xcel Energy, Aurora Water and UCHealth. APS plans to make the fair an annual event and hopes to expand it in future years to more high school grades.
With plans to become a geriatric nurse, Vista PEAK freshman Jeiry Ramos tried to absorb as much information as she could during the event. “Being at the Career Fair is helping me because I’m asking a lot of questions, mostly around the medical field tables and they’re really helping me with answers on what I need to know to get into my future career,” she said.