Students get a peek at professional world

A student learning in the classroom is nothing new in Baldwin — that’s how it’s supposed to be. However, many Baldwin High School students have had the opportunity to expand their knowledge base and get a look at real world work environments in recent months.

Through partnerships with a variety of businesses and organizations, BHS students have done their fair share of traveling to get a first hand look at how work gets done. Professionals who have hosted BHS students in recent months at their place of work gathered on Dec. 11 at BHS where they ate breakfast and heard from students about their experiences.

Baldwin’s School-to-Career Breakfast featured 18 student speakers who discussed what they learned on these recent field trips and how it has impacted their future plans.

Gabriel Turhan, who took a trip on Dec. 5 to North Shore-LIJ to learn about industrial engineering, previously thought someone in that field would only have job opportunities working in a factory. After completing a few activities simulating how an industrial engineer streamlines an inefficient process and getting a tour of North Shore-LIJ’s facility, Turhan said the experience opened his eyes as to what it really means to be an industrial engineer.

The district’s School-to-Career and Career Academy programs are thriving, science teacher Barbara Riess said. “Without the important work that you do for us,” she said to the professionals who attended the breakfast, “we cannot run these programs, we cannot give our students the experiences and the opportunities that they get.”

Senior Valerie Conforti shadowed some medical experts at Huntington Hospital last week where she watched a doctor perform a cat scan, heard how a pharmacist coordinates with doctors to prescribe medicine and took a tour of the electrophysiology lab.

Since Conforti would like to be a physician’s assistant, she enjoyed spending time with a Stony Brook University graduate student who is doing a residency at the hospital and said she learned a lot. “This experience only deepened my excitement for future aspirations of being a physician’s assistant,” she said.