Educators Rising Utah is a career and technical organization for students that helps put them on the path to become accomplished teachers. The program allows high school and college students to explore careers in education and participate in hands-on teaching experiences.
The program is part of Park City High School’s education pathway in the Career and Technical Education department.
Every year, students compete in local, state and national competitions. Each includes around 20 skills categories ranging from public speaking to job interviews to creating lesson plans.
Over 10 Park City High School students competed at this year’s state competition at Weber State University on March 5. Junior Kendall Bankson led the way, finishing in first place in the “exploring support services in education” category.
Bankson said she’s interested in becoming a school counselor or a social worker, and based her project on that. She started by spending eight hours shadowing crisis and academic counselors at the high school and some elementary schools.
Much of that time was spent with a Parley’s Park Elementary counselor.
“Elementary school counselors are so different because they're really working with the kid with more personal problems, like dealing out situations with friends or just behavior problems understanding how different everything is really helped me to know what I wanted to do,” she said.
Bankson also identified obstacles counselors faced and proposed solutions as part of the project. She said one challenge is getting teachers and parents on the same page.
“Everyone thinks that their job is the most important, and it's really hard for some people to see a different perspective. So trying to make parents and teachers understand that and see it from a new perspective can be the hardest part,” Bankson said.
She also said it can be hard to help parents see what may help their child when they are feeling a loss of control. Overall, Bankson said it's a counselor's goal to foster a community of understanding.
During the competition, she presented her findings and proposed solutions to challenges. She was surprised by her first-place win.
“All of my knowledge was just in my head, and I was scared I was just gonna completely, like, forget it,” Bankson said. “Once I got to the judges' table, it was just like these two older ladies, and I was like, ‘Oh, I'm fine, I got this,’ and all of my anxiety went away, and I just started completely yapping.”
Sophomore teammates Morgan Manning and Josie Miner took home second place in the “interactive bulletin board for elementary students” category. It was titled “Take What You Need” in big lettering at the top and had envelopes labeled “kindness,” “love” and “advice.”
Edward Potts, an advisor for the educator’s rising program, said if a child pulled a paper from the “kindness” envelope, it would say something like, “Introduce yourself to someone that you haven't met and tell them your name.”
“I think it scored well, because they put a lot of thought into, like, what would an elementary kid want to hear,” he said. “It was all about, like, building a school culture or a school community in a positive way.”
Emerson Blank placed third place in the high school division of the bulletin board category.
Her board explained how student identity should not be intertwined with GPA. During her project, Potts said around 100 kids answered a survey, indicating what they wished people knew about them, what their GPA was and what they care about. The interactive portion of the board allowed students to open a profile of a person to discover their answers.
Potts said an interesting contrast was highlighted on the board. While some students with low GPAs had vivid goals they wanted to work toward, like being a lawyer, other kids with high GPAs had no idea what they wanted to do with their future.
The four winners have the opportunity to compete in a national competition this summer. Potts said the students will decide whether to go at the end of the quarter.
