Oro Valley businesses and companies in the surrounding area were bombarded Monday with students eager to learn, as all 240 eighth-graders from Coronado K-8 School, near Catalina, fanned out into the community for a day of job shadowing.
Last week, a list of nearly 60 businesses was posted at the school for the eighth-graders to choose where they wanted to spend the day. And Monday morning, six buses arrived at the school, each assigned a different route to follow and let off small groups of students at businesses along the way.
From Data Doctors to Brake Masters, the Melting Pot restaurant to the Oro Valley Pet Clinic, students had a smorgasbord of prospective professions to peruse.
"I've wanted to be a vet since I was little," said Kelsy Cesarone, 13.
Her biggest obstacle at the moment? Fear of needles.
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"It's so creepy. The needle is going into the skin. It's so weird," she said after watching a black and white cat, Nash, get vaccinated by Ivan Weinstein, the veterinarian who owns Oro Valley Pet Clinic.
When Weinstein injected the cat, Kelsy closed her eyes, she said.
Such issues are exactly the kinds of things the Coronado administration wants its eighth-graders to be considering as they plan for high school.
"This trip is happening before our eighth-graders are visited by the high-school guidance counselors," said Monica Nelson, Coronado's principal. "We wanted them to have the opportunity to go behind the scenes and see what it's really like in the jobs they think they might like."
But it also gives the kids a chance to begin thinking about a four-year plan for high school and not just what courses to take in ninth grade, she said.
"What I want to enforce on these children is what it takes to get this job, which is education," said Richard Howard, pharmacy manager at Osco Drug inside the Albertsons supermarket at 10805 N. Oracle Road. He was hosting four Coronado students for the event.
"I want to reinforce the things that were taught to me when I was a child. You need to be paying attention now," he said in a telephone interview.
Howard didn't always appreciate such lessons when he was younger, he said, and sometimes thought teachers whose lessons he struggled with were "mean."
It turned out that his mind just wasn't ready to understand yet, he said. He went back years later and told his high-school chemistry teacher — with whom he had struggled — how right she was.
"Give your teachers the respect they deserve, because they are the ones who can help you get where you need to go," Howard said.
That counts not just for pharmacy, but for any job, he said.
At Rural/Metro Fire Department, firefighters showed their young audience how to use a thermal-imaging camera to find a person in a burning room before the group trooped outside for an up-close introduction to the various compartments and components on a fire truck.
"I can't emphasize how important math is, especially if you want to be an engineer or a medic," said Steve Hathaway, a firefighter who is also a truck engineer.
The Melting Pot fondue restaurant's general manager, Cameron Green, said he was looking forward to showing his three eighth-graders the backstage "nuts and bolts" of running a restaurant, he said.
Things such as prep work, inventory and lots and lots of paperwork are chores that don't cross the minds of most people when they dine out, he said in a telephone interview.
"We'll probably put a knife in their hands and let them cut a couple things," he said.
With the rise in popularity of culinary institutes and people who want to become restaurant chefs, it's important for would-be restaurant workers to have a broad understanding of how restaurants work beyond the kitchen, he said.
"I used to think it would be great to be a casino dealer," he said. Then he noticed many casino dealers didn't look very happy in their jobs.
"It's always good to talk first to the people who have the job you'd like."
