By Tiffany Hasbrouck, February guest blogger
Last spring, a few individuals at Deloitte & Touche LLP, including myself, got together to commence a volunteer program to help students with areas such as resume writing, interview skills, and college and career searching (you know, items you need to know, but not necessarily “subjects” in school). After months of tweaking the curriculum, we had established what we thought would be a segway for students about to enter the “real” world.
You see, I came from a volunteering background. Meals on Wheels, Canned Food Drives, and Halloween Parties for the little kids were second nature growing up. I love to help people in any way I can. However, I was a bit nervous, as to how individuals (some older than myself) were going to perceive random people coming into their classroom to teach them “life skills.” This was new to me.
How WRONG I was!
My most memorable experience with teaching our curriculum was week six “College & Job Search.” I entered the first MN school, noting students were very diverse. In fact, for the most part, English was possibly the third or fourth language spoken. We proceeded to teach the students how to use the MCIS program, which was a segway to learning all about how interests translated to majors, careers, salary, and success. Most of the students were very responsive! They couldn’t believe how helpful and interesting this was.
However, there was one student who didn’t perceive this well. You could see that “Johnny” thought all of this was irrelevant to him. He thought he didn’t like anything that would translate into a major or a career. So I approached Johnny. After taking the time to sit and talk with him, I learned that he loved music, cars, and working with his hands. But what he didn’t understand, prior to our talk, was that there were MULTIPLE successful majors and careers for him. Yes, he might not have been the type that was going to sit at a desk job from 9-5, but that’s OKAY! I told Johnny about my close friend who reminded me exactly of him. He wasn’t very interested in a desk job, but when he found that a school close to Minneapolis was a place for majors in auto mechanics, with specialty in car detailing he was set.
Johnny and I searched the MCIS system for interests of his, in which he noted over 5 different majors and schools that would allow him to work in a field he had a passion for. What a crazy thought to him! The hour that we had together seemed to put a spark in Johnny's attitude and a skip in his step. How could this be? There WAS a place for him out there? What I was delighted to learn was that Johnny even applied for one of the schools that we had found that day!
It never ceases to amaze me the power that volunteering has to help others. I think it is so positive that our MN schools are allowing organizations and groups to come into the classroom and try to further enhance and help students one at a time.
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