Hempfield High School juniors are learning skills that will last a lifetime.

Students in the mandatory personal financial literacy class started the school year by being interviewed by local businesspeople on Sept. 18.

"We prepare and plan how to run through an interview," teacher Brittney Hix said. "They were given the questions and rubric ahead of time, and then each of them goes over (to an adjacent classroom) for a one-on-one practice interview. It gets them experience and practice on walking up to someone, shaking their hand, making eye contact, explaining themselves, and then hopefully in future interviews, they'll be more prepared to get real jobs."

Jason Jesberger of Market Street Sports Group was one of the community members who interviewed students. "We talk to the students about what they want to get into after high school, whether that's college, whether that's a job, whether that's going into the trades, and then we try to give them advice on the next steps," he said. "We talk to them about how they manage their time and talk to them about opportunities that they should be looking for in mentoring, job shadowing, internships, things that they can get beyond high school to get to their goals."

Hix and teacher Jay Ridinger prepare students for the interviews. "Mr. Ridinger gave us the question, so then we had a sheet, we had the rubric we filled out, and we memorized the questions," junior Addison Horner said. "We also had a whole class period where we were able to do that, and then we were able to go check with Mr. Ridinger on our answers."

Teachers and students then assess how the process played out. "The next class period, they'll get the rubrics back, they'll get the questions back, and they look at it," Hix said. "It's used as a graduation standard for career readiness. Then they handwrite thank you letters to the individuals who they interviewed with as another step after the whole interview process, and then usually we just talk and reflect. Most of them as soon as they come back over, realize it's not as scary or intimidating as they thought it was. I've even had some who were more prepared for their real interviews because of this."

Addison agreed that her interview with Jesberger was smoother that she had anticipated. They went over all the questions and discussed their shared love of sports. "Interviews aren't as scary as they may seem," Addison said. ''I think it was really helpful in making sure that I was having the right cues, making eye contact, sitting in my chair without fidgeting, and really speaking thoroughly because I know speaking thoroughly is very important so the interviewer knows what I'm saying."

Jesberger enjoyed the opportunity to interact with the students. "You really just want to get to know the kids a little bit better and try to get a feel for what their skill set is," Jesberger said. "I think it's really important that they have these conversations with adults that they're not used to and seeing every day, like their teachers and their parents. They meet a stranger, and they have to shake their hand and look us in the eye and have a conversation. It's not texting or ChatGPT and that kind of thing. It's really neat to have them have these interpersonal experiences where they have to be themselves and present themselves in a professional manner."

Jesberger said the personal financial literacy class is a big benefit to students. "I was a high school student and a college student, and I would have liked the opportunity to talk to other people about their careers and what successful people that are in this room did to get to their position," he said. "I find that really rewarding to tell (students) that there's pitfalls and there's a winding road. As a junior in high school, I didn't know what I was going to do for a living, and how did I get here 30 years later? It's kind of neat."

Jesberger frequently volunteers to take part in Hempfield High projects that require assistance from members of the community. "I think it's important to give back to the kids. I'm a father. I have two boys that went to high school and went to college. I know that they've had people that have helped them along the way, because I couldn't. I didn't do anything that they're professionally into now, so it's cool to get other people's thoughts and experiences."

Hix noted that students create a resume in class prior that they hand to the interviewer. "It was really fun to make the resume and realize where my strengths were, what I needed continue to work on, and where I need a bulk on my resume," Addison said.

She is looking forward to the remainder of the personal financial literacy class. "We're going to learn how to budget soon," Addison said. "We learned college expenses during this unit. We learned also about taxes, which was very helpful, because not many people know how to do their taxes properly. And I think in a later chapter, we're going to go more in depth into that, so I'm really excited for that unit."