Revere will host a reinvented Futures Day on October 12 to help give students a look into a litany of different careers and provide SAT practice.

In previous years, the district configured Futures Day in many different ways, but beginning this year, a new process looks to maximize the student experience and allow for a greater level of engagement to be felt.

Futures Day will begin with a school wide practice SAT (pSAT) test. Juniors and sophomores have the opportunity to take a simulated test, while freshmen will take a specialized ninth grade version. Seniors will not be required to attend school and counselors encourage them to complete college applications and schedule campus visits throughout the day.

School Counselor Nick DePompei has overseen much of the pSAT preparation. He explained how the testing will look different this year and why.

“The pSAT helps students start with low-stakes standardized tests to then prepare for more meaningful tests when they hit their later years in high school.  It is a great way to also see where students are at academically and can help with making choices on courses they should take or what help they might need to improve in certain areas,” DePompei said.

Following the pSAT, students will rotate through three thirty minute meetings: lunch, logistics and a career survey. The career survey will be done to allow for students to gauge their possible interest in certain career paths, while the logistics meeting will serve to explain the flow of the remainder of the day.

Career Specialist Nancy Vondrak played a key organizational role in the planning of the Day. Due to this involvement she has seen the challenges that the event takes. She spoke on what goes into a successful Futures Day.

“It is a lot of planning, brainstorming, and being unafraid to ‘think outside the box’.  For me, the biggest thing has been to refrain from doing what’s always been done.  Change can be good!  I like to ‘shake things up’ a bit and try different things.  I often joke by saying ‘I’ll try anything twice.  If it doesn’t work out the first time, then I have a challenge to try it a second time and make it better,’ and I have tried to apply that mentality to Futures Day,” Vondrak said.

Principal Dr. Andy Peltz has been the driving force behind many of the changes that have been made to the structure of Futures Day. Particularly, he hopes the changes allow for students to attain a greater image of what they want from their future. Due to this, he has implemented multiple strategies such as the career survey. He explained the importance of these changes.

“The whole point of Futures Day is that someone will see a career that they never really considered before, and I think that through exposing them to those paths, we can do that. For some, it may just be a thing that clicks, but for most, it takes a lot for their future to really make sense, and by giving out context like the survey we can give that opportunity,” Peltz said.

Once students have chosen their preferred courses 4 – 30 minute sessions will begin, which will allow for students to visit 3 unique career cluster panels covering topics from arts and communication to business management. The fourth of these sessions will be a required meeting between each class and a board of local leaders and community members. Peltz explained why the change to broader panels was made.

“The larger panel presents an opportunity to show somebody who may want to go into a particular field, but doesn’t know just what to expect from it, a variety of different careers they may have never considered. The panel also allows the student to visit many different sectors instead of focusing on one or two,” Peltz said.

Following the four sessions, students will be required to complete a survey that will identify which sessions they visited and the careers they would like to learn more about.