Web Essay: Show city students career options

NATE BRIGHTMAN, Guest Essayist

I was thinking about the problem of the high dropout rates in the Rochester City School District and it occurred to me that perhaps the school district (all school districts, for that matter) could do a better job of exposing students at a young age to more of the career possibilities out there for them and what type of subject matter they will need to master in order to have a career in those professions.

I grew up in a blue-collar family, graduating from Aquinas Institute in 1973. Even though Aquinas was basically a college preparatory high school, coming from a blue-collar family where no one had attended college, I had only the vaguest of ideas of what sorts of professional careers would be available to me after college graduation, or what education was required to enter them. I had no idea why I needed to learn the Periodic Table, physics or algebra, trigonometry or calculus.

Like myself, the majority of kids in the RCSD don’t come from families where the adults are college graduates with professional careers. Many aren’t even high school graduates. I’m willing to bet these kids have even less of any idea of where an education can take them than I did sitting in a classroom 40 years ago.

Show these kids what careers are out there for them, what their earnings potential in those careers could be and what skills they need to master to gain entry to them. Then, perhaps, they’ll be more interested in attending school, sitting in algebra class, than skipping school, hanging out with their friends running the streets. Help them connect the dots between what they’re being taught in school and how it applies to what they hope to be doing after graduation. Give them more than a vague purpose for being in school.

Nate Brightman is a Rochester resident.