A day devoted to exploring non-traditional careers led high school girls to laser tools and drills and high school boys to dental X-ray equipment and children's toys last week at Northwest Technical College.
On Friday, the event, called Extreme Tech, drew high school students from throughout the region. It was sponsored by NTC and North Country Cooperative.
Taking a hands-on approach, Extreme Tech is designed to expose high school students to non-traditional career settings, as well as higher education opportunities, said Kari Kantack, a recruitment specialist at NTC who helped organize the event.
Boys attended sessions on nursing, dental assisting, child care and accounting while girls attended sessions on carpentry, construction/electricity, industrial model making and residential plumbing/heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
Bemidji High School sophomore Nicole Knowlton noted during a break between sessions Friday that the event was a good learning experience.
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"We learned how to solder," said Nicole, noting one of the hands-on activities for girls.
BHS sophomore Derek Lofgren, on the other hand, joined other boys for sessions on careers such as dental assisting.
"We took X-rays of people's mouths like a dental assistant," he said.
Meanwhile, Derek said he learned how to take out stitches during the nursing session.
"It's different," he noted of the experiences at Extreme Tech, "and we got to see it from a lot of men's point of views."
During the nursing session, a male NTC nursing graduate and two male nursing students at NTC spoke to the boys about what led them to nursing.
"We tried to include as many visuals of men in nursing," said NTC Nursing Director Rhonda Bender, who noted that the session included videos, posters and journals such as "Men in Nursing." "One of our goals was to break the stereotype that nurses are female."
She noted that some of the boys in the session admittedly had never thought of nursing as a career path for themselves.
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Meanwhile, Kurt Kalbrener, a construction/electricity instructor at NTC, helped girls build electronic signs that light up. In other sessions, girls built bird feeders, made copper flowers and etched "Extreme Tech" into plastic with a laser.
"They've got a lot of hands-on experiences in one day," Kalbrener said.
