Spark Career Exploration Program: Early Exposure to Careers Fosters Identity and Ambition in Students

Our goal is to introduce, careers to students as well as helping them develop their career identity. Mimeo Sim was recommended by one of our colleagues who was helping The three d printers and lab discs have been, two of the things we've used the most with students. I train them on the lab disc for about forty five seconds. They take to it very quickly. They understand how to use it. What we do in, spark, it's about a career exploration. And the way do it with middle schoolers. We try to make it as much fun as possible, which is doing activities. We created a lesson where students created their own logo for a business. And they did it through a teacher cat, and that's something that if they continue to pursue in the future, now they have that hold going more, it into the three d printer. We wanna do something more like that. So the students can also show their families and continue to take away things like that. Denver Public Schools is the largest urban district in Colorado we serve close to ninety thousand students. The work of developing career identities for our students is really important us so that they can plan and chart their futures and get careers that sustain them and their families. We weren't really aware of what was out there, the training that we received through Mimeo really helped us understand the equipment and how we could use it. When I had the third graders doing sailboat races with the three printed boats and the sail of their own design. We had volunteers that came out from a corporation, most of whom were engineers. And so each small group of kids was assigned their engineer, and they got to iterate on their design. So they could design a sailboat, put it in the water, try it out. That was a really a good opportunity for even young kids to see engineering principles at work and how you don't always get it right the first time, and you have to keep experimenting and trying and iterating on your design. I think that's so important. And with the robots, it helps out a lot and not only connects them with something that is advancing in our in our age drive with psychology anything, but it's also sometimes you're gonna fail, and then you'll learn something, or sometimes you're just gonna keep filling it. You're just gonna figure it out. All of these technologies have a way of tying in to the different careers that they're exploring, even as very young children.