Happy New Year, Everyone!
This is Promise Corps from High School of the Future and we are kicking 2020 off with a bang! From January 7th-9th, we hosted our first Speaker Week, where students had the opportunity to listen to the experiences of various professionals, gain an insight to their future post-secondary careers, and create meaningful connections.
On Tuesday, Eric Scott from the Philadelphia Fire Department spoke to a range of students from 10th to 12th grades, about his profession as a firefighter. The myths that were debunked through questions the students asked were:
- Owning dalmatians.
- Workers living in the fire department.
- Fire suits are fire proof
- Except a few fire departments in Philadelphia, there are no more pole slides.
And many more.
The students learned that the Fire Department requires a civil service test, meaning that they are open to the public, but their testing process is once every two years. There is a lot of training involved, including how to handle the equipment and being Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certified.
On Wednesday January 8th, four speakers presented to our students. Bianca Dolchanczyk from the Jean Madeline Aveda Institute, Hillary Kane from the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development (PHENND), Francis Mouzon from City Year, and Community College of Philadelphia 
student Diana Soto. Students learned about a variety of post-secondary options including community college, national service, cosmetology school, and non-profit work.
On Thursday January 9th, students heard from Frank Taylor of the Universal Technical Institute (UTI) about trade school and technical careers. UTI is known nationwide for their automotive programs. We were also visited by Marc Holley from PSTV, the Philadelphia School District’s education channel. They set up their DJ booth and taught a small group of students how to mix music.
We would like to thank all of our speakers for taking time to talk to our students as well as High School of the Future educators for welcoming us into their classrooms.
Alexis Johnson, College and Career Coach – High School of the Future
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