Helping Students Become Future Ready
As our community continues to grow and develop, I feel it is of the utmost importance that our youth understand the opportunities for employment within our community and region. The days of parents saying “you have to have a 4 year degree” are long gone and just hold no truth in todays workplace and market. There will always be positions for this subgroup available, but job specific education seems to hold much more relevance today than ever.
The Chamber will be assisting with this mission of exposing and preparing our youth for what truly lies ahead by working with the Future Ready Expo coming up on February 28th at Walters State Expo Center. This event will show attendees 4 different career clusters including advanced manufacturing, health and public service, information technology and retail and business services. These sessions will be targeted toward 8th graders, but will also allow other students, parents, teachers and the general community to learn then attend a job fair.
We understand as parents, that each of our babies will become a doctor, lawyer or future NFL player, but after we wake up from that dream, we can focus on the true attributes and skill sets of our youth and not just our own wishful thinking. I’d say out of this group of students, we will have multiple doctors and lawyers and there isn’t a reason to not strive for a career of that level if this is what your child has their heart set on, but as parents, we have to be aware of alternatives and set our children up for career success.
I would encourage all our members to visit the public portion of the Expo between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. and see what our business community has to offer.