Monthly nontraditional field trips—to a car dealership, a dental office, a shoe manufacturing company—are carefully planned by Fort Herriman Middle School’s Career and Technology Education team to help guide students to future careers they will enjoy.

“We're looking at students that have these aptitudes that aren't showing any interest and inviting them to participate in these field trips and with these guest speakers, so that they can explore a new career that they've never even thought about or considered,” FHMS CTE department head Jacob Cope said.

Guest speakers and specialized field trips featuring a different industry are offered each month throughout the school year. Cope said exposure to a variety of jobs is important especially for youth who don't know what they're good at or what job they’d do well in.

As students enrolled in sewing classes were about to begin sewing a pair of pajama pants, their teacher Juli Andresen took them on a field trip to a fabric warehouse.

“That's just not something you can show a picture of and feel the enormity of it, and inside that workplace, that's just not something you can get out of the classroom, even if you showed a video,” Andresen said. “They have 100 foot ceilings with fabric stacked all the way to the top, just aisle after aisle after aisle of bolts and bolts and bolts of fabric and so many designs—it's just everything you can possibly think of, every holiday, every pattern, every animal, covered, printed onto cotton fabric.”

The students, who are learning all the skills to transform fabric and a pattern into a finished product, were able to see how those skills could be applied to a career if it’s something they enjoy doing.

“Those are the exact same things that a person who works as a fashion designer or who assembles clothing in a factory needs to know on a daily basis to do their job,” Cope said. “We're trying to help them see that what they're learning in school is actually useful information that they can make money with, they can build a career on.”

The group of 35 students invited on the field trip were not all sewing students. Students with an interest or aptitude for sewing, art, design or business were invited to visit the Riley Blake Designs warehouse, where they make custom printed fabrics at a large scale, as well as hear from a guest speaker who started a quilting business.

Other field trips planned for the year include the Jordan Valley Water Department, a Honda car dealership, a shoe manufacturing company, Hill Air Force Base, SheTech, a cooking class, a dental office and the Salt Lake Valley 911 call center.

Last year’s visit to the 911 call center inspired one student to get certified in CPR and first aid. He plans to register for JATC classes in high school to become a CNA and possibly pursue a career as a first responder.

Cope said this is the kind of outcome they hope to see from the field trips.

“We're trying to expose them to opportunities and ideas, get them networking, talking to industry professionals, seeing what's out there,” he said. “It's a lot of work on our end, but it's awesome to see students out there talking to a pilot or talking to a 911 operator or seeing what people are doing and experiencing in their job.”

Andresen said there’s also just something special about going on a field trip that helps students make connections to their learning and their community.

“They spend seven hours inside this building, and so the experience of being able to leave while everyone else is here is a little bit of an exhilarating feeling,” she said. “You're with your peers. You get to leave school. You get to see the community during the day when you normally wouldn't see them. You get to go to this building that you normally wouldn't have gone in, and get to see these people working in an industry or career maybe you never even thought of. So I think all of those things combined make a real impression on them.”