Letter: Fostering career connections

Fostering career connections

YouthEntity offered 14 after-school internship classes serving 150 sixth-grade students at Basalt and Carbondale middle schools over the past eight weeks. This program — “My Career. My Life.” — is designed to help students ignite their unique potential by matching their interests with the world of careers and facilitate connections between students and professionals from our community.

We want to thank school staff members who made this program possible: Jennifer Ellsperman and Karen Hillebrand of Basalt Middle School, Jennifer Lamont and Heather Fox of Carbondale Middle School and Brian Berg of Enrichment Wednesdays.

One internship-project highlight included a redesign of the Basalt Middle School teachers lounge by our design team, which worked within its budget to please its clients/teachers! Students additionally studied career choices such as law enforcement, culinary arts, business entrepreneurship and fashion design.

We’re grateful to the following professionals who coached an internship and provided career-oriented learning opportunities for students: Jan Eagers, Lorrie Fleischman, Jaime Fowler, Amanda Kurz, Tom Lankering, Brian Lemke, Bryan Nelson, Chris Norvell, and Genna Moe at Basalt Middle; Carol Berry, Delia Bolster, Kiara Christenson, Alexandra Jerkunica, Susie Jimenez, Amy Kimberly, Chuck Maker, Cherylynn Nye, Oneal Peters, Kat Rich, and Evan Zislis at Carbondale Middle School. Also, special thanks to DHM Design, Nick Chan and Poss Architecture, Gail Shannon, Mi Casita, Village Smithy, Peppino’s Pizza, Dos Gringos, Kristy Van de Kamp, Holly Gressett, Heidi Johnson, Melissa Miller and the Basalt Police Department.

To find out how you can get involved, please visit us at http://www.youthentity.org

Heather Hicks

Associate director, YouthEntity