By By Steve Gillespie/ staff writer
April 4, 2002
Career Days, where representatives from the world of work visit schools and talk to students about job opportunities, are more common on the high school and college level.
But at Crestwood Elementary School, the attitude is "you can never start too early." Children from prekindergarten through fifth-grade will spend Friday visiting more than 30 booths and learning about possible careers.
Barbara Collier, an assistant teacher at the school and Crestwood's Career Day coordinator, started the program about five years ago.
Collier said the school's fifth-graders already are taking their career choices seriously. "It doesn't hurt to start early and it gives the students an idea of what they want to be," she added.
Career Day will run from 9 a.m.-noon; it will be followed by a picnic for the students and participants.
Some of the participants include representatives from the Meridian Police Department, the Meridian Fire Department, the District Attorney's Office, the Mississippi Highway Patrol, Mississippi Power Co., BankPlus and the state Forestry Commission.
Others will represent the U.S. Postal Service, the Mississippi National Guard, the Meridian City Council and the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors.
Deana Cornish, community education nurse for Riley Hospital, will talk to students about a career in health care. She has attended Crestwood's Career Day for several years.
She said she shows the students X-rays and explains to them that they will have to go to school and learn how to take pictures of bones if they want to be a radiologist.
She also gives the students coloring books.