Job Shadow

SSAQUAH, Washington—For one day last winter, 14-year-old Aaron Schwid was the youngest worker at Immunex, one of Seattle's premiere biopharmaceutical and therapeutics companies.

Schwid, an eighth-grader at Issaquah Middle School, donned the lab coat and spent the day at the elbow of a molecular biologist who had agreed to show him around and let him help with the work. For an eight-hour day, Schwid applied chemicals to cultures, heated them in ovens, and noted the results of his tests. It was all a part of Job Shadow Day at Issaquah Middle School, a day when each of the 270 eighth-graders got a glimpse at the world of work.

"I like science and I thought it would be interesting to work with genes and stuff," says Schwid, explaining why he chose the biotech profession for his job shadow experience.

Schwid and his classmates were responsible for setting up their job shadows—everything from selecting a profession to contacting someone in the field to making arrangements for the day. Some students arranged to spend the day in occupations where they had a personal interest. Others, though, took what they could get.

What they learned was surprising to them and gratifying to their teachers, who are attempting to instill in middle school children an awareness of opportunities and challenges that await them in a future that's never as far off as they suppose.

"If you want to make an impression and change the way young people think about themselves and about the world, middle school is a great place to do it," says Connie Heldt, an eighth-grade humanities teacher at Issaquah who also coordinates the Job Shadow Day. "They're so open at that period in their lives. They're very altruistic at that age—they want to help, they want to feel important. This makes them feel like adults."

Job Shadow Highlights School-to-Work Activities
Heldt says that at Issaquah Middle School the annual Job Shadow Day is the highlight of a school year punctuated by school-to-work activities. It all begins in the fall, when a motivational speaker talks to students about setting personal and career goals. Trips to the local high school help eighth-grade students keep the next step of their education in mind and give them access to a variety of career resources. An activity called "Pay Me What I'm Worth" teaches the workers of tomorrow some job-market savvy. And at year's end, the Spring Forum provides a venue for students to present a portfolio of projects and demonstrated skills for adult community members, including local luminaries. One year the mayor of Issaquah attended, another year it was the school superintendent. It is at the Spring Forum that Schwid will show the fruit of his Job Shadow Day.

The work at Immunex was not what Schwid expected. "I thought they'd be in this really exotic lab with gene splicers and big computers all over the place," he says. "They were all crammed in this little room, and it smelled really bad because they were growing bacteria. It was kind of boring, too, because you had to wait around a lot."

Another student, 13-year-old Melissa Oxman, shadowed someone whose job was not one she has set her sights on. "I really want to be a fashion designer, but I couldn't find one to shadow so I chose a buyer for Nordstrom [the Seattle-based department store]."

Still, it was an eye-opener for her. "It wasn't all glamorous," Oxman says, recounting how her buyer kept track of what each store should be selling more of based on hour-to-hour comparisons of past years' sales." I thought you'd be able to go to a lot of vendors. It was a lot of phone work, and the hours are really long."

Fourteen-year-old Whitney Lewis shadowed a line chef at a local restaurant, and spent the day doing food preparation. The experience reinforced her desire to be a chef, but she questions the financial benefits of the work. "I want to be rich, so I have to work my way up there (she indicates with her fingers the culinary ladder). I have to get a cookbook out now. Something like that."

Kevin Mitchell, 14, found that shadowing a Federal Aviation Administration inspector reinforced his desire to go into that line of work. "He got paid really good," Mitchell says. In addition, Mitchell enjoyed talking with captains in the cockpits of 767s and listening to airline representatives discuss safety procedures.

Job Shadow Day ended up being more than a day for some students. Marisa Kuplan, 14, went to an evening basketball game between two local high schools with a sportswriter for the Seattle Times newspaper. "The next day he showed me how he puts the story together," says Kuplan. Like Lewis and Mitchell, she's even more interested in sportswriting now that she's had a taste of the real thing.

Shadowing Provides Realistic Glimpse
Students agreed that their job shadow experiences were valuable, even if disillusioning for some. "I still want to do something with science," says Schwid, "just more exciting. Maybe be a mad scientist or something; that'd be fun."

"I think it's also good preparation for life," adds Lewis, "because you have to be alone when you do it. I did mine with someone I didn't even know. It's kind of like a job interview."

That's the whole point, Heldt says. "We encourage the students to shadow someone they don't know. Part of the process is being uncomfortable. The adult world is about taking risks, and I've told the kids that. I've found that kids who shadow someone they don't know have a much more positive experience. The red carpet is rolled out for them. People are much more eager to make sure the kids understand what's going on and let them be involved in it."

Students at Issaquah Middle School have participated in the job shadow activity for six years. In that time, says Heldt, students have shadowed lawyers and cartoonists, watched brain surgery, spent time behind bars in jail, and worked all shifts, including graveyard.

However, the most popular choices of students include police work, firefighting, radio and television, veterinary practice, and—perhaps more than any other—dentistry. Heldt laughs and says, "Thank goodness for the dentist industry."

For more information, contact Connie Heldt, humanities teacher, Issaquah Middle School, (206) 557-6831.

Matthew Fleagle is a Seattle-based freelance writer.

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