Rochelle Township High School hosted its first RTHS Trades Day, an opportunity for students to meet with local stakeholders and workers from various industries, Friday, Dec. 5.

Attending local businesses and organizations included Cain Millwork, Zekelman Industries, AMS Industries, Bayer Crop Science, the city of Rochelle, Rochelle Municipal Utilities, the Rochelle Fire Department, the Rochelle Police Department, Illinois Laborers & Contractors Joint Apprenticeship Training Program, Mid-America Regional Carpenters Apprenticeship Training Program, Turner Concrete, Sheet Metal Workers Local 219, Rochelle Community Hospital, and Electrical Workers IBEW 364.

RTHS career & technical education teacher Deanna Jacobs called the event an “atypical career fair” where representatives from different trades can tell students about their jobs, including positives and negatives, along with the education and/or training it took to get where they are.

The event is in addition to RTHS’s yearly career fair, which will be held later this year.

“They’re learning from the people directly, versus learning from us teachers and what we’ve found online,” Jacobs said. “This event is just more trade specific. It’s for kids that don’t necessarily want to go the four-year college route, to see what other opportunities are available out there. Today has been fabulous. We’ve had a lot of kids come down from study halls and other classes that we didn’t anticipate having. We haven’t really had kids sitting around. They’ve all been engaging with the different companies, which has been fun to see.”

Jacobs said she and RTHS want students to see there are a lot of different opportunities, and that they don’t necessarily have to take the four-year college path to be successful. Students were introduced to representatives from Rochelle’s large industrial sector.

The RTHS CTE teacher thanked local employers for their support and attendance on Friday.

“We sent out an email back in August to see if they had any interest in this,” Jacobs said. “Watching all of the companies jump up and say they’d be happy to do it and give support has been huge. We’ve learned that a lot of our kids don’t really know that the industrial district south of town exists. That there’s all of this industry right here and they can make a successful career in this area. They don’t have to go to Chicago and they can still do really well here.”

Jacobs was happy to see students learn about trades directly from employers and people that do the work everyday, rather than hearing about it from RTHS teachers as they usually do. Students were encouraged to speak with a number of employers and to ask questions.

Careers at trades day ranged from nursing to firefighting to machinist to electrical lineman. Jacobs hoped that students at the event would have an interaction that gave them career inspiration.

“It’s been fun to watch the more shy kids go up and ask questions and be fully engaged,” Jacobs said. “Seeing a student find a career that they like and latch on to it and go in that direction is the ultimate prize. You have the kids that come in as freshmen with no idea what they want to do and they say they’ll just pick the college route and figure it out. And then they find something they’re truly interested in and they focus on classes they didn’t care much about before. Because they now have an end goal, and that’s massive.”

Trades day has been a six-year dream of Jacobs’ that finally came to fruition on Friday. The event will continue in the coming years.

“We’ve had more businesses than we expected this year and we have more that want to do it next year,” Jacobs said. “We may outgrow the library. It’s an awesome problem to have.”