Morton Junior High counselors roll out 'Future Focus Fridays' to connect students with local employers

Danielle Cox, a school counselor at Morton Junior High, said the counseling team launched “Future Focus Fridays” after a fall needs assessment showed students and staff wanted more opportunities to explore careers and see how academic skills apply on the job.

The program sends seventh- and eighth-graders on daylong site visits to local employers and pairs those visits with in-school activities and take-home career guides. “We formed a program called Future Focus Fridays,” Cox said, describing the effort to immerse students in community workplaces and show what jobs look like behind closed doors.

Counselor Jen Rae listed the host sites for the visits, saying seventh-graders visited five locations — Precision Planting; the Village of Morton public works facilities; the Caterpillar plant; Morton Buildings; and American Rental — while eighth-graders visited four sites, including the Jump Trading Center in Puria, Morton Industries and Perfect Promotion, along with an in-school demonstration by the Peak and Police Department. Rae said the program has three goals: promote local career exploration, link academics to real-world applications and prepare students for purposeful future work.

“Seventh graders had the opportunity to visit five different locations,” Rae said, adding that each field trip takes roughly an hour and that students otherwise attend all eight of their regular classes on a Future Focus Friday. Rae thanked bus drivers and the district transportation team — naming Julie Tharp — and praised host organizations for accommodating groups of about 60 students and showing what skills and education different jobs require.

Hannah Bonich, another Morton Junior High counselor, said the school provided each student with a career guide booklet from the Illinois State Board of Education to help them explore fields and jobs they may not have known about. Bonich also described a buildingwide, team-based reflection activity called the “job hunt,” which uses QR codes linked to Google forms. Participation earns teams leaderboard points and weekly incentives such as leaving school two minutes early or winning a pizza for a cafeteria table.

“I think it’s important for kids our age because it really gets them thinking about what they might want to do when they’re older,” an eighth-grade student said after participating, adding that Precision Planting and the Jump Trading Center stood out and that the visits highlighted the importance of communication and collaboration. Counselors said the visits and associated activities ran throughout the month of February and aimed to tap Morton’s local business resources while helping students connect classroom learning to careers.

Program leaders did not specify budget sources or whether the district expects to expand the program next year. The counselors said they are grateful to host businesses, staff and administration for supporting the initial rollout.