I believe job shadowing should be a required part of any high school curriculum. It gives students the opportunity to get out in today's workforce and see what is available to them. We hear so much about different jobs, in the news and through loved ones, but how does one know if it's truly the job for them unless they experience it themselves?

As a high school junior, I job shadowed in an elementary classroom on several occasions. I was given the opportunity to shadow in classrooms from Kindergarten to 6th grade. Spending a day these different classrooms gave me the opportunity to see perspectives from different teachers. I saw the way they taught, what their day consisted of and how it varied from school to school and what was expected of them each day. My entire life, as I was growing up, I knew I wanted to be an elementary teacher. After job shadowing in several classrooms, I knew I was ready to make that dream come true.

There are many students though that job shadow during high school and realize that what they thought was their dream job was not a job they had any interest in at all! Unfortunately there were even a handful of students in my freshman and sophomore classes, in college, that were just realizing then that the major they chose was something they truly did not have any interest in. Had they been given the opportunity to job shadow in high school, that decision could've been made much sooner and could've saved them a lot of money.

Job shadowing should be a required step in each adolescent's life, as they're preparing for their future. A day in "the real world" is just as important as a day filled with math, phys. ed, and science classes.

Learn more about this author, Jennifer King.
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