Brody Students Explore College, Careers, and Community
Brody Middle School students learned about college, career and community opportunities at their 3rd annual C3 Fair.
Wednesday morning at Brody Middle School the gym again was transformed into a one-way time tunnel to the future for the school’s third annual College, Career & Community Fair, aka, C3. Thirty-nine schools, organizations and agencies arrived early to prepare for hundreds of guests. Tables were draped with school banners. Forget-us-nots including utensils like pencils as well as just-for-fun stuff like candy was laid out for the taking, an all you can grab swag buffet.
Brody 8th graders were at the service of exhibitors who overflowed the school parking lot. Student council reps in the roles of “ambassadors” and “diplomats” helped with promotional luggage and fetched bottled waters to wet the whistles of the pitchmen. Had Myles Bodtke, to name just one, been a waiter at a fine restaurant he would already have earned himself a generous tip by the time the event officially began at 9:00 AM.
Kelly Comiskey is a counselor at Brody. She explained the rationale and the itinerary for the half-day event.
“Besides colleges there are community agencies here where kids in middle school are welcome to volunteer now,” she said. “That’s good for their high school resume and as an IB school, we also emphasize community service as an element of our curriculum. Eighth graders come through in two shifts of 35 minutes each. Then 7th graders for 25 minutes at a time and 6th graders for 15.”
Not only were volunteer opportunities knocking at the door of students’ attention, so were educational options less distant than college. Central Campus and Gear Up Iowa were both high-traffic areas with the first wave of 8th graders. For them high school is so close they can almost taste it.
Everything from A (US Army) to Z (Blank Park Zoo) was represented. Iowa State University brought cardinal and gold pom-poms. The Des Moines Fire Department had helmets and axes and hose nozzles on display. The Iowa Department of Corrections was passing out as many Tootsie Rolls as a 4th of July parade float.
According to Comiskey the C3 event is hardly stand-alone. For instance, she said, 8th graders will have some college readiness follow-up exercises and 7th graders will be visited by the Iowa College Aid Commission to raise awareness of some of the nuances of preparation for college; non-academic aspects like the logistics of the application processes for admission and financial aid.
But Wednesday morning was a chance to straddle two worlds, romping through your middle school gym with your middle school pals as a Brody Cardinal while getting a glimpse of yourself as an Iowa Hawkeye or ISU Cyclone or UNI Panther or Drake Bulldog at the same time. College pennants that hang on the walls of the gym year round came alive. C3 is like that, one of those rare occasions when you can be in two (or lots more) places at one time.
