It is 1 p.m. on a Wednesday – school’s out, but the library at the Interlake High School is seeing a steady trickle of students. It is time for “Pizza with a Purpose”, an unusual gathering that has been designed by the students and facilitated by Eastside Pathways Career Pathways collaborative, specifically to give students of color the opportunity to meet professionals with whom they can identify.
The kids were soon joined by adults – the professionals who took time off from their day jobs to come and chat with these young high schoolers. They were women and men from Microsoft, Kaiser Permanente, Seattle University, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, and other organizations.
The kids were enthused and the adults besieged with questions. Bursts of laughter punctuated the conversation. Intent faces listened, absorbed, as the professionals shared their career paths and experiences.
“There were lots of interesting questions, and it was obvious that the students were genuinely interested in what we had to say and weren’t just going through the motions because they had to,” shares Gjanje Smith, urologist at Kaiser Permanente.
The questions to the professionals around the tables came thick and fast:
- What motivates you?
- Tell us something that you are comfortable doing now that you would not have been able to do before.
- How do I recover from a bad semester in high school without taking future admission to medical school off the table?
- How can I set up a shadowing opportunity?
“The kids were very curious,” shares a professional from Microsoft. “They wanted to know about my job – what did I do? What were my responsibilities? What did I study in school and college?”
The concept of Pizza with a Purpose is new – in fact, this is just the second one. But, it fills a critical gap. Many young students of color rarely see professionals from their ethnic groups while growing up, and therefore have few role models. In conversations with students from Black Student Union and Latinos Unidos at Interlake High School, the Career Pathways team heard that students wanted to connect, informally, with professionals from fields they were interested in, and, more importantly, who looked like them. And that’s how this program evolved.
“It is completely student-driven; we just facilitate the meeting,” says Monika Steen, the facilitator at Eastside Pathways for Career Pathways collaborative. “Pizza with a Purpose gives them a chance not only to see professionals of color but also hear their stories, ask questions and relate to them on a personal level. We are hoping that these relations will help students follow their dreams to the careers of their choice. And perhaps some encounters could open the doors to new careers.”
Gjanje is a firm believer that such interactions are extremely impactful and necessary to engage with young students. Her own personal experience gives weight to that belief.
“I think it’s very important for our students to see people who look like them in roles that they might think are unattainable. I ended up going into medicine after attending an event where I met a black female physician who was thriving professionally and in her personal life. Before meeting her, I did not pursue a career in medicine because I thought it was impossible to have both a career and family. Meeting her at a pre-med society meeting in college (which I attended only because of the free pizza), changed my life! My conversation with her about how she balanced her career with being a mother to her 12-year-old son and still found time to work out had a huge impact. That same week, I changed my undergraduate major and was on the road to preparing to apply to medical school. Seeing somebody who looked like me doing what I wanted to do reassured me that my dream was not impossible.”
The two meetings held so far (in November and in March) have yielded positive results, both from the students and the professionals. The attendance at both events was great, and feedback was good.
Continuing to build on that, the next event will take the program a step further. “Dinner with a Purpose” on May 11 (again, designed and led by the students) will be held in the evening and will be inviting families of students to give them also the chance to talk to professionals.
Stay tuned as we bring you voices of students from the next interaction!
