At some point in a person’s life, there comes time for them to get a job. Whether that may be a retail job, a corporate office job or everything in between.
For students, they have a variety of different first jobs that they can choose from.
Junior Reece Loe had seen the older teens from when she was younger working at XLT (eXtended Learning Time) and always wondered if she could get a job there.
“A lot of the times we’re just kind of playing with the kids, making sure that they’re not doing something outrageous,” Loe said. “[Also] trying to maintain them and keep them entertained while having to be after school there.”
A new program has started up at Nixa offering intern jobs to students. Someone who has taken up one of these jobs is junior Arianna Baker.
“I manage Nixa schools administration social media,” Baker said. “I work on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I help with quick news statistics, I work with that just a little bit. I’ve worked on a few magazines that the district will put out.”
As president of DECA and FBLA, junior Charlotte McClanahan started working last summer through the school district at the team store because of her experience with business.
“What I do is the team store,” McClanahan said. “Most of the time I’m tagging T-shirts, and I design T-shirts. I kind of do it from the birth of a T-shirt to the end of it, when it’s sold.”
While Baker said she wants to major in political science and global affairs, she also realizes how much this job can help her with future choices.
“I’m in high school,” Baker said. “I’m at a point where it’s just like, ‘Oh, here’s a job hiring a high schooler. Here’s a really cool opportunity to meet people, to grow skills and to network a lot.’ I think regardless of what major I’d like to pursue, both of them are going to help in the long run.”
McClanahan believes that her job has given her experience that other students her age may not have in the business world.
“I’m a little bit more trustworthy, because I have more experience on … [the] business side of a job than high schoolers do,” McClanahan said. “[I can] talk about different experiences, or trying to solve a problem for a business.”
Even though Loe knows that a job in childcare is not something she wants further down the road, she knows that her current job can impact a job in her future.
“If I go into more of the criminal psychology side of things, I can look at childhood, like the childhood of the students that I’m working with,” Loe said.
As students are busy with their other activities throughout the school year, jobs that run through Nixa provide local opportunities for students who want to work but don’t have much time in their schedule, due to their flexible hours and close proximity.
“[My job] is a little bit more of a look into what a future career could be like,” McClanahan said.
