The Junior Leadership program in Franklin County provides many opportunities to local students that enhance their high school experience and can better prepare them for their futures. One of the activities is a job shadowing day, which took place Feb. 2.

“Every year they spend half a day in a professional setting they think they might be interested in pursuing after graduation,” explained Chamber Director Cassie Medley.

Students choose three professions they are interested in, and then Medley tries to place them in one of those fields in Franklin County.

“It shows them that there are job opportunities here and you can work in Franklin County after college,” she said.

The students visit their assigned business from 8 a.m. to noon with the objective of learning about the good and not-so-glamorous parts of the job, Medley said.

“We’ve had good stories come from it, and then there are those who realized what the job actually entailed and changed their mind,” Medley said.

Every year students shadow doctors, teachers, beauticians, attorneys, law enforcement, manufacturers and more.

In 2018, several students shadowed judges at the Franklin County Courthouse. The judges agreed job shadowing is beneficial to the students. Probate Judge Barry Moore said it is good because it gives them a good idea of what actually goes on at the jobs they are considering.

District Court Judge Paula McDowell agreed. “I think it opens their eyes to the different levels of the many different professions they can pursue,” she said.

Certainly there are facets of every job that are unknown to people outside the field, and junior leaders Matthew Williams, Jazmin Vidal and Yaslin Perez discovered this when they were job shadowing at the courthouse.

“It was interesting learning about the different judges and their individual jobs,” Williams said. Vidal and Perez admitted a lot of things happen in the courthouse that they didn’t know about, especially in the probate office.