July 31, 2024
Dianne Ciceron spends her days interacting with travelers over Seattle-Tacoma International Airport’s (SEA) digital channels to help them have a smooth journey through the airport. Working on SEA’s Customer Care team, she is used to a fast-paced, unpredictable, and at times, chaotic environment and thinking outside the box to solve problems.
When she was asked to share her career journey with a classroom of seventh graders, she was a little nervous but jumped at the chance. Thinking on her feet is all in a day’s work. Ciceron and other Port of Seattle staff participated in Highline Public Schools’ Career Exploration Days this spring, which brought in representatives from a variety of industries to introduce seventh-grade students to different careers.
First districtwide programming
2024 was the first time Highline put together Career Exploration Days events for seventh graders on a district level. Chinook, Cascade, Glacier, Pacific, and Sylvester middle schools each held events for students to learn about career options. Highline reached out to industry partners, including the Port, to showcase a wide range of careers and pathways into careers. The Port, which has an ongoing partnership with Highline to introduce students to Port-related jobs, decided which roles to highlight in the sessions and Highline provided guidance around approaches to working with middle schoolers and creating experiences that would resonate.
At each school, seventh graders rotated through three different presentations during the day and participants created activities to engage students about their work. Prior to the day, students participated in a career interest survey. Afterward, they reflected on the experience.
“In seventh grade we want students to begin to understand there are tools that can help them think about where they might be inclined to explore. Middle school is a time to expand understanding and knowledge,” said Janet Blanford, Director of Secondary Success, College and Career Readiness at Highline Public Schools. “Young people are starting to think about their future in a more concrete way.”
At Highline Public Schools, career exploration activities start in elementary school, as early as preschool and kindergarten, and continue through middle school and high school. Along the way, students have access to a career assessment tool called Naviance, which features self-assessments and allows students to explore career paths and search for scholarships and work-based learning opportunities.
Exploring different paths
Ciceron and Customer Care colleague, Rosa Johnson, talked to students about the roles of experience versus education in their career journeys — showing students there can be multiple paths to the same career. Johnson’s path into her role included a college degree and a Port internship, while Ciceron started her role at the Port after completing high school and a Port internship.
Johnson and Ciceron also wanted to let students know that jobs like theirs exist and that customer service is an important part of making an airport work. As a kid, Ciceron remembers thinking she’d be a veterinary technician and work with animals; she never dreamed she’d work in customer service at an airport. “Thousands of jobs go into making an airport work; in middle school, I never could have imagined this job would have existed,” Ciceron said.
They listened to students’ own experiences at SEA and shared what they love about their jobs. “At the airport, we are able to turn around and make people’s days,” Johnson said. “We understand where travelers are coming from, why they are stressed, and problem-solve to try to help them out.”
Ciceron and Johnson presented to some language-specific classes, including classes that were dedicated to students and teachers who spoke Spanish and Vietnamese. Their remarks were translated by the teacher. “Based on that, we were able to connect to specific language translation options for the airport,” Johnson said. “We were able to naturally integrate how translation is a key part of the support customer care provides and how students can get help at the airport with their families.”
Questions that came up included “How did you get in your career?”; “Did you think you'd be working in customer service?”; “What do you like about your job?”; “What don’t you like about your job?”; and “What is your salary?”
They also used the opportunity to share about other cool jobs at the airport. One student said that she wanted to be an artist but was worried that she couldn’t get a job as an artist. “We told her that SEA has the largest public art program at any airport and that you can have art in an airport and curate art, and her face lit up,” Johnson said. They also highlighted other jobs like the airport’s team of wildlife biologists and the air service development team, which helps bring new international carriers and routes to SEA.
Expanding career options
In 2024 the Port’s Project Management Group set an equity goal to perform career-related outreach within the communities surrounding SEA. “Our goal was to reach the communities that airport operations impact the most,” said JJ Jordan, Capital Project Manager. Participation in Highline’s Career Exploration Days was a perfect fit.
Project management jobs and construction management jobs pay well and are jobs that most seventh graders do not know exist. “We wanted to expose these groups to opportunities out there and what pathways different individuals took to get there. College or on-the-job training are both successful ways to do it,” said Stuart Mathews, Assistant Director of the Aviation Project Management Group.
In the classroom, students were excited to try on the personal protective equipment (PPE) that the Project Management Group provided — vests, hats, and glasses worn on construction sites. Fifteen to 20 members of the Project Management Group participated in the events and presented their stories.
“Students went all in taking pictures of themselves wearing PPE,” Mathews said. “And maybe for a handful of them, a spark has been set. That’s what’s cool for me. There were different stories to be told and we were able to engage with kids individually. That made it a lot of fun.”
Jordan said interacting with physical, tactile things, and people’s personal experiences resonated the most with students. “This is important because these are jobs that are difficult to fill and it can be hard to find good people. This a pipeline to the next generation of talent,” Mathews said. “We want to let folks know what types of jobs are out there so they can start thinking about that early.”
Increasing access to careers
L’Shray Jones, Pacific Middle School Counselor, challenged her students to explore outside the norm and look at careers they may not have thought of before. The Friday of Pacific’s career exploration day, attendance was at a high — 95%. Jones said she could hear students talk about their experience at lunch, the sessions they attended, and what they learned.
“It’s very important to have these opportunities in the communities we come from that I'm also a part of. We’re resilient and we work hard but at the same time, we don’t have access to certain things that other kids have access to. These events are opening doors to access and helping them think beyond,” she said. “They can start to think ‘I can become that. That's how the person did this.’ We can plant a seed and continue to water it so it can grow and students can take those next steps.”
She said that seeing is believing and when students see people in a profession who look like them, they believe it even more. There are also different ways to start a career. It’s not just becoming an athlete, joining the military, going to college, or completing internships – it’s about finding the option that’s right for each person.
The school district looked at feedback from students and participants to see how events can be even more successful in future years.
“We learned a lot about how we can support industry partners in preparing and engaging with seventh graders, and what kinds of structures we need to put in place with schools to make sure students have a positive experience,” Blanford said. “This truly is the type of thing school districts can’t do on their own. We need partners like the Port that are willing to invest time and human resources to be able to build these opportunities for young people, and help students access career opportunities in their backyard.”
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*Photos courtesy of Highline Public Schools.
