More than 240 students from all five high schools in this community were able to learn more about the working world of work by “job shadowing” personnel in a variety of organizations on Friday.
The students were given the opportunity to learn about careers as part of the National Job Shadowing Day initiative, which was coordinated locally by the Greene County Partnership and sponsored by Junior Achievement.
Originally scheduled for Feb. 2, but postponed because county schools were closed, the event was the 10th local observance. Dana Wilds, who coordinated the program for the Partnership, said, “I would like to personally thank each host for their cooperation and support especially since we had to rely on a snow date.”
Employers across the county, and even a few in neighboring counties, welcomed groups of students, giving them a chance to see first-hand people working in a variety of jobs.
Cortney Ledford and Alyssa Ricker, both seniors at South Greene High School, “job shadowed” Greene County Circuit Court Clerk Gail Davis Jeffers.
Jeffers introduced the girls to her deputy clerks, who talked to them individually and showed them their record-keeping duties and the computer system they use. The girls were able to sit in on a session of General Sessions Court, and to look at the various types of documents the office maintains.
Ledford and Ricker said they are interested in becoming paralegals and are taking government classes. They each said the experience showed them more about the field they hope to enter.
Cody Lobsiger, a junior at North Greene, was assigned to job shadow a judge, even though he said his first choice would have been something in the medical field.
Lobsiger said he hopes to be a registered nurse, probably in the U.S. Army, but said meeting Circuit Judge Tom Wright and Jeffers, and learning more about the court system, was time well spent.
Tabitha Linkous, a senior at West Greene High School, shadowed Corrections Officer Tonya Wagner at the Greene County Detention Center. Linkous said she signed up for “job shadowing” because she isn’t sure what job she wants to do, and picked law enforcement on Friday because “It’s interesting.”
She talked to several corrections officers, and saw how the county detention center’s 20-year-old video monitoring system is used to maintain security, and learned that it is due for replacement soon.
Tenecia Hogan, a junior at WGHS, is interested in becoming a nurse. On Friday, she was able to job-shadow Demaris Dickenson, RN, head nurse on the pediatric floor at Laughlin Memorial Hospital, and Casey Fillers, RN, another pediatric nurse.
“I want to be a baby nurse, because I love working with babies,” Hogan said.
Amanda Church, a South Greene senior, also shadowed the two nurses. Church said she is “not really sure what department” she would most like to work in, but is sure she wants to be a registered nurse.
Both girls got to see how the pediatric floor is organized, and how nurses are able to do patient-charting with laptop computers that are now mounted in each patient’s room.
Mary Baldwin, a sophomore at Greeneville High School, said she wants to be a doctor, probably a radiologist, so she was very pleased to be able to job shadow in Laughlin Hospital’s radiology department.
Radiation therapists Brian Wright and Marlo Hicks showed her the hospital’s linear accelerator, which is used to administer radiation treatments to cancer patients, and told her about the training they had to undergo to prepare for their jobs.
Craig Lucks, a West Greene junior, and Brittany Pendleton, a Chuckey-Doak sophomore, both take a computer design class at the Center for Technology, so they were pleased to be able to shadow Brian Painter, a designer at the Parker Hannifin plant here.
Painter showed them how he uses computer aided drafting to design components of Parker Hannifin pumps and other products.
Pendleton said she ultimately would like to be an engineer specializing in fire protection, because she was told that it is currently among the best-paying engineering specialties. Lucks is also interested in fire-protection engineering.
Pendleton said she has family members who are firefighters, and wants to volunteer herself as soon as she turns 16. She said she is very interested in arson investigations, which is related to fire-protection engineering.
At The Greeneville Sun, Matt Johnson, a Chuckey-Doak High School junior, and Jesse Haas, a North Greene High School freshman, were able to shadow several employees, including advertising director Artie Wehenkle, production manager Freda Thomas Turbyfill, a graphic artist by training, and Steven Ayers, the webmaster for greenevillesun.com on the Internet.
Johnson said he plans to try for a position on the school newspaper next year. Turbyfill let the boys use graphic design programs to create an ad that may be considered for a future issue.
Both Johnson and Haas are very interested in videography, and were surprised to learn that Ayers is preparing to add video clips to the Sun’s Internet product. They both seemed to enjoy watching him prepare advertisements and news updates for the Internet.
Wilds said Job Shadowing Day is a chance for parents, educators, employers and community members to give young people a valuable learning experience that reinforces the role of academics in job success and helps them make career choices more suited to their interests.
According to a national survey by Junior Achievement, one-third of students have learned about career choices from job shadowing.
“The support of this program by the business community is truly amazing. I cannot thank the business participants enough for their commitment to this program,” Wilds said. Partners In Education is a joint effort of the Greeneville and Greene County school systems and the Greene County Partnership to provide links between local schools and businesses, institutions and organizations in the community.
At least 113 businesses, schools or government offices either hosted job shadowers or were willing to do so this year, Wilds said.
