With Miss Alcorn Kristina Brown serving as emcee, class by class the students at Sherman Avenue Elementary walked down the hall in the career day parade dressed in costumes representing their favorite careers. Firefighters and police officers were well represented during the parade as were doctors and nurses.

The parade marked the end of career day at Sherman Avenue, which included guest speakers from a variety of fields coming to talk to the students.

“We wanted to make sure we exposed them to the various careers that are available to them when they leave or graduate school,” Sherman Avenue principal Tameka Davis said. “Like (Chad) Shealy says, all roads lead to employment. This is a great way for children at the lower level to learn about various career paths they can take.”

Three firefighters from the Vicksburg fire department were among the speakers as were Miss Alcorn, Elmira Ratliff, an associate dean at Hinds Vicksburg, and Charlie McCullum, a former probation officer and criminal justice teacher.

“We are actually starting to hire at 18 years old now so if they want to be a firefighter, they will be able to do it right when they graduate high school,” VFD firefighter Andrew Rodgers II said. “The career is out there as an opportunity for them.”

As part of the firefighters’ talk with students, Rodgers put on the full suit in order to show children what they could expect to see during an emergency situation.

“It gets them familiarized with us so if a real fire does jump off and we have to go and rescue them, they won’t be scared and they will run to us instead of away from us,” Rodgers said.

The career day program was part of Sherman Avenue’s monthly thematic units, which takes the curriculum across all the subjects and gives them a monthly theme and then a weekly topic based around that theme.

“August’s unit was all about me when I grow up,” Davis said. “Different things that children said they wanted to be when they grew up, we tried to incorporated into our career day and career parade.”