Connecting the Dots program helps Southeast Nebraska students pursue potential career pathways

FAIRBURY - Identifying a career is a critical step in the maturation process for any young person. But what jobs are out there? And what do the pathways to those professions look like? That's what a statewide simulation exercise attempts to solve.

Around 200 students from seven Southeast Nebraska schools (Fairbury, Deshler, Diller-Odell, Freeman, Thayer Central, Bruning-Davenport, and Southern) participated in the Nebraska Extension's Connecting the Dots program earlier this month in Jefferson County.

The students worked on crafting resumes, weighed whether to attend 4-year schools, community colleges or join the military, and enjoyed direct interactions with local professionals.

"We got to go through several rounds of really cool career exploration with the students, and it’s been really fun to see them step out of their comfort zone, learn what a resume is, as well as do things like talk to local employers, really get an idea of what it looks like to be in the workforce, and then to ask good questions of the employers that they wouldn’t necessarily interact with on a daily basis," said Tracy Ensor, an Extension educator based in Otoe County.

The program is designed to introduce students to fields they might be interested in themselves, plus expose them to career paths they may never have considered before.

"[This is] giving kids the option and the opportunity to just explore their pathway. A lot of kids don’t know what they want to do at this point in their lives, and that’s OK. We’re just giving them the opportunity to do some exploration and then hopefully find a career path that fits for them in the long term," said Ensor, who spearheaded Tuesday's exercise. "So at the end of this I just want them to realize that work is not necessarily a straight path, and that sometimes what career path comes about is not necessarily what you started out with."

The Extension executed the program, but it was made possible through funding applied through the Perkins Grant process and applied to Southeast Nebraska by Education Service Unit 5, which helps to "serve the education needs" of Jefferson, Gage and Thayer Counties.

"The goal is to give kids career exploration opportunities and introduce them to careers they aren't necessarily familiar with," said Annette Weise, ESU-5's Director of Alternative Programs. "There are other careers that exist in education, and likewise in any of the other career clusters. This gives them a chance to explore all of that."

All of the professionals at this month's simulation live and work in and around Jefferson County, in various career clusters like healthcare, business, and agriculture.

So part of the Extension's objective for this exercise is not just to show the students that these jobs exist, but that they exist here in Nebraska - which might encourage them to stick around the state when they get older, helping combat the "brain drain" problem Nebraska is enduring across the state.

"How do we get kids to enjoy what they’re doing, stay in the state, and love where they’re living and what they’re doing," Ensor outlined. "And that’s why we try to get a lot of local employers here as well, so that they can see these are things within my county or within my community that I can do, and maybe I’ve never heard of that before. So it’s really exciting to see that they can continue to grow."