PHOTOS BY HARRY LYNCH - hlynch@newsobserver.com
Raleigh Safety and Community Club Alaina Garris, a sixth grader, makes a move to return a serve during an interactive tennis demonstration at Microsoft's facility in Durham Monday - a teacher work day for many.
DURHAM -- Studiously scribbling notes about the jobs performed by various Microsoft employees may not sound like an opportunity most kids would seize on a teacher work day. But for about 40 students from the Raleigh Safety and Community Club, Monday's day out of class was the perfect time to head to the workplace.
The students, from grades kindergarten through 12, visited Microsoft offices in Durham to learn about careers in the fields of science and technology, to experience video conferencing and to even play Xbox games.
"At first I wasn't going to come today," said Greg Harris, a junior at Raleigh's Broughton High School, "but I'm glad I did."
He has been in the club since he was 10, and he's now a counselor who mentors younger kids. Every day after school, Greg goes to the Southeast Raleigh club, where he gets help with his homework and receives a meal each evening.
"You also get a tutor who shares the same interests as you, and it helps you focus," Greg said. His focus is art, and he hopes to go to N.C. State University to study animation one day.
Before the Microsoft tour, Greg said he did not consider how much thought goes into the process of creating a design for an Xbox game. He learned how to take into consideration factors such as aesthetics, cost, form and function.
"He doesn't just like to make art," said his younger friend, Qahhaara Jackson, a seventh-grader in the Safety Club. "He's amazing at drawing."
Jeanne Tedrow, co-founder and executive director of Passage Home, the nonprofit that runs the club, said it is important to expose the students to professional careers.
For many of the kids in the club, such field trips are among the few opportunities they have to leave their neighborhoods and find out what careers exist in the Triangle.
The average income of the families that Passage Home serves through the Raleigh Safety Club and Community Center is below the poverty line.
"It's your generation that's going to be creating the next technology," Brett Austin, business productivity specialist at Microsoft's Triangle office, said as he watched Greg and Qahhaara.
Austin hopes to encourage other companies, such as large banks in the area, to host the group so the students can see other career options.
One of the goals for bringing the students to Microsoft was to specifically promote a STEM career - a job in science, technology, engineering or math.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, STEM occupations are expected to grow 17 percent by 2018, compared to 9.8 percent for non-STEM occupations.
That means, for kids like Greg and Qahhaara, the chances of landing a job in a STEM-related field will be even higher by the time they graduate from college.
