Kimberly and Stetson wore awestruck expressions on their faces as they toured The Career Academy with their fellow middle school classmates this winter.
The two seventh graders joined dozens of AVID students from Mickle and Park on special preview tours of TCA’s building. They caught glimpses of culinary arts kitchens, walked by welding classrooms and learned how to tie tourniquets from health sciences students.
“I think it’s a really great experience to be here and see what you can do in the future,” Kimberly said.
“This school’s amazing,” Stetson said. “I would definitely suggest going here. I love that we could get a tour.”
Valerie Moser-Bergo said she hoped the tours would inspire everyone who attended. Moser-Bergo is TCA’s school and career counselor and helped organize the visits alongside TCA Instructional Coordinator Jocelyn Crabtree.
“The importance of middle school visits is to ignite curiosity and generate interest,” Moser-Bergo said. “As a former middle school counselor, sometimes showing what options are available in school can generate some hope and rationale for why school is important.”
Park teacher Claudia Perales-Garcia and Mickle teacher Liz Sundberg watched their students learn more about careers ranging from biology to business.
“Providing them with a unique field trip experience such as TCA provides AVID students with new opportunities they had no idea were available to them,” Perales-Garcia said.
“It’s very important to provide tours to places like TCA for AVID students because one of the main missions of AVID is to provide opportunity knowledge,” Sundberg said.
Grace is a junior at East High School enrolled in TCA’s human services pathway. She is interested in becoming a psychiatrist after graduating from college.
“I enjoy talking to younger kids, and I’m really glad I did TCA. I think it would be great if more people did it and found out about it,” Grace said.
“They’ve had really good questions,” Grace said of the seventh graders. “It was really fun to help them out.”
Learn more about The Career Academy at home.lps.org/tca/ and AVID programs in LPS at home.lps.org/avid/.
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