Explore 2023 Success, an Eighth Grade Career Exploration Event was in session this morning in UAHT’s Hempstead Hall, where hundreds of area students could be seen in the facility’s auditorium listening raptly to Tyler Tarver, who spoke onstage about tomorrow’s jobs that the students could take action today to pursue.
As I took my seat, Tarver, a Benton native who as a math teacher has created Tarver Academy, a website that provides video-based training for teachers, was explaining how the AI website ChatGPT can and cannot be used in academic work (No to having it write your paper. Yes to letting it act as your assistant.) He would go on to say AI will lead to a number of new careers as employers will hire people to develop and enter the prompts AI will need to carry out tasks.
Tarver also asserted that in the future the eighth graders of today could find jobs pursuing their own particular passions. He invited two students to the stage, asked what they liked to do and then told both how they could create websites that appealed to those needing instruction in math or in playing the popular game FORTNITE and make a living. He brought to the video screen the website of RetroRick, who has developed a Youtube site exploring older video games which has received 255,000 subscribers.
In closing, Tarver gave some advice. “Every day when you go to school, learn one thing. There's some stuff spoiler alert, there's stuff you're going to learn in school that you’ll probably never use again after school.” Tarver added that “the problem solving, the ability to tie things together, the ability to build on to different things” would help the students learn as they enter their chosen careers.
One of the organizers of the event was Mary Godwin, Economic Development Director of Nevada County. She said the event would draw about 800 students from numerous towns in Southwest Arkansas, including Fouke, Horatio, Magnolia, Camden, Prescott, Spring Hill, Hope, Mineral Springs, Foreman, Ashdown and Rosston.
Because Arkansas’ Department of Education requires for eighth graders to participate in content related to career choices, so they can begin to make choices by early high school of what courses fit with their career preferences, Godwin said.
Explore 2023 Success is also a result of Godwin’s conversations with area employers. The idea for the event began “when we heard from [employers at] our manufacturing facilities here in Southwest Arkansas and other places, saying that they wanted the kids in this area to be aware of the good job opportunities that are here, that they can make an excellent living in this area. They wanted the kids to know what is here.”
After Tarver’s turn as keynote speaker, the students attending the event’s morning session attended as many as three breakout sessions in Hempstead Hall’s conference rooms and outdoors that were administered by representatives from University of Arkansas Cossatot, the City of Hope, Holcim, Pafford Emergency Services, Hope Police and Fire Departments, UAHT’s welding and nursing programs and Farm Bureau.
