Last Spring, Rainier Prep partnered with multiple professionals in the greater Seattle community to create our inaugural 8th Grade Job Shadow Program. Students gained invaluable experience with the job application process as they composed cover letters and resumes, sought out letters of recommendation, and asked for school transcripts to apply to the one-day immersion of their choice.
Eleven students were selected to shadow nine different professionals, including a UW Marketing professor and program director, a community manager at a coworking firm, a software engineer, a fashion designer, an environmental lawyer, a pediatrician at a women’s shelter, a structural engineer, a director of product marketing for a software startup, and a vending manager for a major beverage company.
Our students learned so much from their experience:
“My favorite part of the job shadow program was when we attended her morning and afternoon meetings, and when we went out for lunch and I got to know Mrs. E. more!” ~ Hibaq
“I appreciated how she was open to answer all of our questions to help us better understand her job. Also, I really enjoyed how she was willing to find people that were not from her industry that could explain their jobs to us. Finally, I really enjoyed how fun the visit to Nordstrom and Zara was because it really showed us how you can get inspiration from others. It was overall just extremely fun and interesting to look at. ” ~ Hebaq
“The top three things I learned from the experience were: 1) Learning how deep fakes work, 2) Coding and knowing there are many different languages of coding, and 3) checking out a real laser that would cut through wood.” ~ Carlos
“My job shadow host is really great. We got to talk to many different people that work in the same building as my host and she was understanding that I was shy and struggle sometimes with asking questions to others. I appreciate that she took the time away from what she normally does to help me get a better understanding of other jobs that may relate to her job.” ~ Jolynna
However, our hosts had their own learning experiences as well:
“I loved how excited they were. They made me remember how cool it is to get to work where I do!” ~ Jess, fashion designer
“Throughout the day Carlos had really great questions to ask of everyone and made sure he worked towards a good understanding on some very complicated topics. A few times he even stumped me on questions about software engineering! He was also a great sport as I led him from one meeting to another and threw a lot of information at him. Through it all he stayed engaged and inquisitive. It was great. Carlos is a smart, nice guy and, from what he told me about himself, I could see him becoming a fantastic software engineer. Hopefully he could see the same for himself.” ~ Alex, software engineer
We were so proud of our students for rising to this challenge. Thank you to all our hosts, and we’re looking forward to the next round of job shadows later this Spring.