The foundation has been laid, and now it is time for eighth graders throughout the Vicksburg Warren School District to decide which career academy they want to participate in next year in ninth grade.

Eighth graders have spent the fall semester learning about the 16 career clusters and working to identify what career they would like to pursue in the future in preparation of choosing a career academy for next year.

Thursday they had the chance to learn about each of the academies — ACME (Architecture, construction, mechatronics and engineering), CAB (Communications, arts and business) and HHS (Health and human services — and River City Early College during the inaugural career academy showcase at Vicksburg Auditorium.

Students from Vicksburg Junior, Warren Central Junior and the Academy of Innovation were brought to the auditorium in shifts throughout the day Thursday and given the chance to learn about each of the academies first hand.

“It was interesting because we’ve never really seen anything like it,” Charity Goldsberry, an eighth grader at WCJH, said. “We usually work on the computer and we do our career clusters, but getting to see it was a lot different that doing it digitally.”

The room was divided into ACME, CAB. HHS and River City Early College sections and students had the chance to spend 15 minutes at each area before rotating to the next one. There they were able to talk to high school students currently enrolled in the academies and see the projects they are working on.

In the HSS area, students from the nursing program donned their lab coats and talked about the courses they are taking and representatives from the Vicksburg police and fire departments were on hand to talk about careers in their fields.

CAB students were making vases on a pottery wheel, screen-printing t-shirts for their new spirit store and 3D printing figurines.

The ACME students worked to program robotic arms and had an area where eighth graders could see the robots that current high school students had built and take them for a spin.

“How amazing they were, how fast they went, it stood out from everything else,” WCJH student Jayden Hill said of why the robots stood out to him. “It will helped me know what I want to do, because I like computers and stuff like that and the robotics there is a lot of technology involved.”

River City Early College students were on hand showing off everything their program has to offer including the underwater robot they built for a competition last school year.

“It is fantastic,” superintendent Chad Shealy said. “A few years ago we sat back and we began talking about what it would look like to create a district that was career focused and that our end game focused on employment. We took a couple small steps early, but to look at all our established academies and our eighth graders taking our keystone and being able to come up here and be sold by the academy and the kids in that academy, it is wonderful.”

The goal of the showcase was to enable to eighth graders to see first hand what each academy has to offer from a project and course standpoint before they submit their preferred academies for next year.

“We are the only place in the state doing something like this so we are very excited,” Lucy DeRossette, VWSD’s Director of Innovation, said. “The kids are engaged. The high schoolers talking to the younger kids is working really well and just letting them see the projects and what they are working on in the high schools is getting them excited for next year.”

The showcase was also open to the community and parents to come through Thursday evening so they could learn more about the academies and help their students through the decision process.

DeRossette said each eighth grader has to submit a their top three academy choices before going home for Christmas break Dec. 22 and then the spring semester will be spent placing them in their academies and designing the course schedules for next school year. If they choose River City, there will be an additional application process the students have to go through.

“Over the course of their eighth grade year they take that elective to decided what am I passionate about,” Shealy said. “What am I good at? What would I enjoy doing for a living? Today is designed for them to be able to look at the projects, look at what is going to happen in the academy they choose and at the end of the day they will go back and fill out their academy choice forms.”