By Taylor Hanson
Silver Lake has a large group of hardworking students inside and outside of school. While their school work is a main priority, a lot of the students have jobs outside of school that many don’t know about. A Google form was sent out to the high school students at Silver Lake. Forty one students responded to the form and eighty five percent responded that they held a job. There is a wide variety of jobs that the students hold such as farm hand, babysitter, chef, CNA, and many more. Each student who said they have a job is involved in one or more extra-curricular activities. Balancing school, work, and activities is not easy, but the Mustangs make it work. Seventeen percent of the students work 25 or more hours a week. A lot of these students have to balance work with sports as well. A student commented, “It got tough at times, mainly because basketball started and we do not know exactly what is going on until that week comes so it is hard to plan ahead.” This year games had to be rescheduled and it was hard to work around that. This year, many seniors are participating in work release. They have the option to either work during first period or to leave during 8th and 9th periods. Out of the 19 seniors, 9 are utilizing this time to get more experience towards a career of their choice. Principal Mr. Jones is working to build Silver Lake’s work release program. Students will be looking at more time to devote to their career and more of an internship program. He says, “This is a great opportunity for our students to earn credits while learning about a certain field.”
Senior Maddie Karr works at The Pines at Blue Hill as a Certified Nursing Assistant. She has worked there for a year and a half. Her job duties include physically taking care of residents, doing activities with the residents, and helping at meal times. She leaves school for work release and works from 3:00 pm to 10:00 pm three nights a week and on the weekends, averaging about 30 hours per week. Maddie commented that she appreciates the school allowing work release: “I appreciate getting to go into work early which allows me more time to work with our current nursing staff and RNs which will help as I work towards my own nursing degree.”
Every student manages their time wisely to ensure school and work are a priority. The Mustang students work hard each and every day and do not get enough recognition.