What do a doctor, game warden, CEO, deputy federal marshal, accountant, process engineer, auto body shop manager, human resources manager, film director and teacher all have in common? Each one hosted a Trinity junior during the annual Junior Job Shadow Day.  The job shadow day, held Oct. 22, is often one of the most memorable events from a Trinity student’s high school career.

For many it’s memorable because it’s a positive experience, but for others it is memorable for the opposite reason.  According to Trinity Principal Dan Zoeller, one of the program’s founders, the day is just as much about students finding out what they don’t want to do for a living as it is about finding what they do want to do.

“A student may go on a job shadow and have the worst experience of his life, which is also a good thing because he won’t waste his time in college preparing for something he will be miserable doing,” Zoeller said.

If the shadow experience is positive, Zoeller said, “A student may get a fire lit; he may see something that interests him and understand what he needs to do to reach that end goal.”

Several years ago Zoeller, with the help of counselors and co-Student Affairs Director Joe Henning, then director of activities, created the Job Shadow Program.  “We modeled much of what we do off a program Assumption (High School) has,” Zoeller said.

The program is currently run by Zoeller, House and Activities Director Matt Manning, Ms. Mary Ann Snyder (an administrative assistant within Academic Services) and Trinity’s English Department.

One of the biggest changes Snyder has seen is “a lot more people volunteering to be hosts.” One of Snyder’s main responsibilities is maintaining a database of host volunteers who would like to participate now and in the future.

“Our guys make such a great impression on these people,” Snyder said. For this reason, the database she maintains of volunteers has more than tripled since the beginning of the program.  Snyder, along with English teachers of juniors, handle most of the administrative side of the program. 

Other changes that have been made include the time of year the day takes place (a move from February to October) to prevent it from being snowed out, and the different ways the program is incorporated into classrooms.

“I think English teachers have changed the way they use (the shadowing day) in their classrooms and what they require as far as research or group projects,” Zoeller said. Teachers require the juniors to write about the shadowing experience.

Most English teachers now use the program to teach juniors how to write a research paper correctly.  Many teachers allow students to use the information learned by job shadowing to be cited as a personal interview, and then require additional research for a formal paper.

Learning to write a research paper, however, may not be the most important outcome of the program. For most students, it can be argued, the real-world experiences and lessons are just as important.

Junior Robert Streeter, for example, was fascinated to learn from Mr. Jim Walker, vice president of Creations Gardens, about how it is more profitable to sell paper goods than food goods. Streeter enjoyed having an opportunity to make lunch and sit down and eat it with Walker.

It was also valuable to Streeter to learn that at the end of the day, he probably wouldn’t enjoy the job if he had to do it every day.

Junior Beau Schnatter learned some different lessons by shadowing a local automotive body shop manager. He said, “I learned how to fix parts on a car, as well as how to find customers.”

Mr. Frank Ward, Advanced Program English teacher for juniors, echoed the importance of experiencing the reality of a specific job.

“We talk a lot about careers, but we don’t talk about what it’s like on a real, day-to-day, hands-on basis,” Ward said.

Zoeller said, “It’s very real world.  People talk about real-world connections in education.  There’s nothing more real world than getting out and going to an office and working with a professional.”

Manning said the program is about pushing students to think about the future: “People need to pushed or guided in a particular way. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.  If we want students to think down the road about what (they are) going to do when (they) get out of high school and out of college, they need to be pushed to start thinking about that now instead of getting into college and wondering, ‘What should I major in or what should I do with the rest of my life.’”