Fifty-nine Beaufort County students shadowed area professionals, letting them explore careers they aspire to enter.

Job Shadow Day, a program headed by the Education Division of the Washington-Beaufort County Chamber of Commerce, brought 10^th-grade students from six area high schools — Southside High School, Washington High School, Northside High School, Terra Ceia Christian School, Pungo Christian Academy and Beaufort County Early College High School — to shadow professionals in Beaufort County. The program, held each year in some form since 1990, is meant to provide awareness of career opportunities in Beaufort County, according to Chamber officials.

Participating students were asked to submit their top three career choices and were matched with area professionals accordingly. Among some of the fields were construction management, law enforcement, youth ministry, veterinary medicine, healthcare, industry/manufacturing and engineering, teaching and law.

Early Wednesday morning, students dispersed and spent half a day in their aspiring fields. Washington High School sophomore Juliana Davis joined the Washington Police Department and learned about all aspects of law enforcement, including records and evidence, the narcotics division, the criminal division and other facets of the department, according to Det. Ron Black, one of several mentors that Davis shadowed.

“I really don’t have any idea what I want to do so this was a good opportunity to get some kind of an idea of what I want to do,” Davis said. “It was really great being able to be around people who do this for a living.”

Davis also learned how to dust for fingerprints and how to take a footprint impression using dental stone and Biofoam, a material used to take impressions. Another of Davis’s mentor Lt. William Chrismon commented on the benefits of having the program.

“It’s an awesome opportunity for them because they get to come out and see what the actual jobs do,” Chrismon said. “And it may be something they don’t want to do, but it may be an opportunity to say, ‘That really interests me, and I want to start working towards that.’”

Madison Tankard, a NHS student, shadowed Dr. Marcus Jones, sitting in on different procedures, lab techniques and overall flow of how things work in a dentist’s office. “It was really cool,” Tankard said. “It makes me want to be a dentist even more.”

Macy Morgan, a PCA student, joined a fifth-grade math and science teacher at John Small Elementary School, which solidified her aspiration of becoming a teacher, she said. Morgan’s mother, Marcy, serves her school as the headmistress and has played a big role in her daughter’s dream, Macy Morgan said.

“I love kids and working with them so education just fits,” Morgan said. “I learned how you have to adapt to different children and learning environments. Different kids learn under different teaching styles. I’ve always been at school with my mom and done things with her and watched how she’s done things as a principal and a teacher. So I see the work she puts in and that’s just the kind of thing I want to do the rest of my life. The most rewarding thing for her is the student who comes back 10, 15, 20 years from later and says, ‘You have helped me so much in life and school.’ So that’s just the kind of thing I want to do.”

Much like Morgan and Tankard, Davis Beeman, a WHS student, solidified his dreams of becoming an optometrist during his shadowing of Dr. Steinberg with Precision Eye Care, a paradigm throughout the day that Chamber Director Catherine Glover says is the whole point of the program — to allow students to explore their aspirations through a process of elimination, of sorts.

“This year, we had more kids participating than in the past and that’s just to grow the initiative,” Glover said. “It all kind of falls under the workforce development initiative of the chamber, which is obviously getting these students to realize the job opportunities that are available here in Beaufort County. We had some great success stories about students that did realize they liked what they thought they would like and some stories where students who aren’t sure or don’t know and that’s a success either way. It gives them a good opportunity to get out in the community.”

Ginger Jefferson, school counselor for Beaufort County Early College High School, echoed Glover’s statements.

“I think it gives them a real world look at what it could look like in whatever occupation they’re looking at and it does help narrow down some choices, I think, of what they might be looking at and it could certainly steer one to that field or open their eyes to what they might not want to do, which is why I think Job Shadow Day is a great thing for students.”