Bethel Park second-graders learn ‘You Can Be Anything’
Microphone in hand, Nathan Ward is looking forward to belting out vocals for appreciative audiences.
Morgan Wolling, MD? That’s what she envisions for the future.
Sid Pilli gives a report on his career choice.
When second-graders in Colleen Manganello’s class chose what careers they might want to pursue, an apparently adventurous student selected the CIA.
“She told me something that I didn’t know: She found out that Julia Child was a CIA agent before she was the French Chef,” Manganello said about the late TV cooking personality. “The teacher learned, and the parents, too. It was win-win.”
Parents of the students at Bethel Park’s George Washington Elementary School gathered just before the conclusion of the academic year for the culmination of “You Can Be Anything,” a project that Manganello developed to promote reading and writing skills.
Her inspiration came from a past end-of-the-year project, “A, B, C’s of Me,” for which students would compile books about themselves, wrapping up with “About the Author” pages.
“I found the students enjoyed writing this page the most because they got to choose, then write about, what they want to be when they grow up,” Manganello explained in a letter to parents regarding “You Can Be Anything.”
“It was a big risk,” she said about the new project. “Usually, your first year is when you learn from your mistakes. But I thought it went well. The kids were so excited. They had such ownership, because they did everything. They picked everything they wanted. And second-graders are usually told what to do, so it’s nice to see them choosing.”
The selection process began with a quiz to see where their interests might lie.
“That wasn’t set in stone, but it was more of a guide,” Manganello said. “If they wanted to be a veterinarian and they scored something different, they could still be a veterinarian.”
She then gave the students nine questions to answer, including:
“What would a regular day look like for you as a veterinarian? What would you wear? How many years of schooling would you have? What might be some words or terminology that you would use in your field?”
Using library books – “because we’re still ‘old school'” – and their district-issued Google Chromebook computers, students began researching their would-be professions.
“They just took off with it. I was so amazed, because it could have gone either way,” Manganello said. “They would work with their friends, and they would be a gentle editor. They would say, ‘I don’t know what you mean’ or ‘You need a period here.’ So they were working as real writers, editing their own work, and then helping their friends.”
The second-graders assembled their work on trifold display boards in advance of a year-end event attended by parents, during which the students spoke about their projects, many of them dressed as they would on their future jobs.
The parents were suitably impressed, as Manganello reported hearing plenty of comments along these lines: “I can’t believe they were able to do all of this.”
Plus they got the lowdown on the French Chef.