Cook County Sheriff's Office

Our presenter is Mrs. Black.  She is an Assistant Executive Director for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.   This is the largest jail in the country, was built in 1921, and it is still standing today.  The Sheriff’s Office has 6,500 employees and has three parts: police, courts, the Department of Corrections, which is the jail where Mrs. Black works.  The Sheriff is Tom Dart.  He is trying to make a difference in public safety. Her department is concerned with public safety for employees and inmates.  She oversees people who write policies for the department.

Mrs. Black went to Lewis University.  She got a Bachelor’s degree there in Criminal Justice.  She then went to Governor’s State for her Masters degree in Criminal Justice/Political Science.  She works with many people: both employees and inmates.

Mrs. Black decided this was the job for her when she was in high school.   She thought it was an exciting one to spend her time with.  Her day has lots of meetings and she has a busy job!!

Mrs. Black brought a K-9 Officer and his police dog with her.  The two of them work in the jail as well.  They help at the jail and do other things like vehicle searches, missing people, and finding articles.

It was exciting learning about Mrs. Black’s job.  We were happy that she brought her visitors with her!

JT, Avery, Lucas, and Alex

Emergency Room Physician

 

Dr. Levine came to our class to talk about his career. He works at Northwestern Memorial Hospital as an Emergency Room Physician.  He is also in charge of the ER Trauma.  He wanted to be a doctor because he loved science.

Dr. Levine helps people that come into the ER.  Patients come in for many reasons.  Some have infections or an injury.   People that are cut really badly may need stitches or staples.  He also treats people that can’t breathe and people that have possible heart problems.  There are many other reasons, but these are the ones he sees most frequently.

Dr. Levine went to school to be a doctor for 12 years.  He went to college for four years.  Then he went to medical school for four years.  Next he did his Residency for four more years.

The best part of his job is to make people happy when he makes their lives better.  The worst part of his job is when he has to tell a family member that someone is really hurt or is not doing well.  

His daily responsibilities are to talk with the nurses about his patients.  He spends most of his day seeing patients.  He also has to plan for traumas and prepare the other doctors and nurses.

Dr. Levine works different hours throughout each month.  He works different shifts (early, afternoon, or night).  He doesn’t have to travel for his job unless he needs to attend a conference out of town.

We really loved to learn about Dr. Levine and his career as an Emergency Room Physician.

Avery, Lucas, and Fouzaan

Emergency Room Physician

Dr. Geoff Crabb came to talk to us about his career as an Emergency Room Physician.  He works at Hinsdale, LaGrange, Bolingbrook, and Glen Oaks Adventist Hospitals.  He runs the ER at LaGrange.

Dr. Crabb went to college for four years.  Then he went to medical school for another four years.  Finally, it took three more years of Residency for him to become an ER Physician.

He was in the 9^th grade when he decided to be an ER doctor.  Dr. Crabb chose his job because he wanted to help other people, make a difference, and be challenged every day.

He does not have a weekly schedule. His responsibilities are to make sure that every body is healthy each and every day.  He also has to make sure that everybody gets a chance to see the doctor.  His youngest patient was newborn, and he even worked with someone 106 years old!  He gives medications, does procedures, fixes broken bones, sews wounds, delivers babies when necessary and sees side effects from other diseases.

Dr. Crabb does not travel much, but he occasionally goes to conferences to learn the newest treatments and guidelines.

Dr. Crabb said the best part of his job was to help people get better and keep people healthy. He said the worst part of his job was to give someone bad news and tell them about things that they cannot fix. The most inspiring part of his job is to be challenged to make a difference in someone’s life.

It was a lot of fun learning about Dr.Crabb’s career.

Sophie, William, Kyle, Matthew

College Professor

We talked with Dr. Sheri Lullo through Skype in our classroom to learn about her career as a college professor.  She works at Union College in Schenectady, New York.  She teaches Art History and focuses on art in China, Japan, and India.

Dr. Lullo works for about 6 and a half hours each day.  Her classes are about one and a half hours long, and she teaches about 3-4 classes a week.  Much of her time is spent in her office planning for her classes, doing research, and meeting with her students.

Dr. Lullo went to college, graduate school, and finally continued for her PhD to get her job.   Now her favorite thing to do is to teach her students and show them how to interpret and make meaning of the art she has learned about herself.

When she was little she loved to draw.  She wanted to take her art further and become an art/history teacher.  She knew this was the job for her when she was in high school.

She has traveled to other countries such as China and Japan to do her research.  This has also helped her to plan what to teach her students.

Dr. Sheri Lullo has a very interesting job.  She really enjoys it, and we would too.  We had a really nice time learning about her and her career!

Saja and Victoria

Denist

Dr. Metcalf came to our classroom during Career Week.  He is a dentist, and the third generation to carry the family business.

He went to college for four years and then he went to dental school for four years.   He did not go further, but if you wanted a specialty in dentistry, you need 2 to 6 more years of school.

Dr. Metcalf works 4-5 days a week.  He spends his days working with his patients.  He takes care of people’s teeth and keeps them healthy.  He works different hours each day, and about 4-5 days a week.  Dr. Metcalf has many duties each day such as checking people’s teeth, looking at x-rays, and finding and removing cavities.  His job is to make sure the teeth are healthy and his patients are informed of how to properly take care of their teeth.

The best part of his job is helping people and teaching people to take care of their teeth.  The worst part of his job is when he has to give people bad news or refer to them to someone else to help with the problem they may have.

Dr. Metcalf brought in some tools for us to see.  He showed us an example of the technology that helps to find cavities as well as the hand tool he uses to get into small places.  Finally, he brought in examples of teeth, dentures, and crowns.

It was fun to learn about being a dentist from Dr. Metcalf.

By: Chase and Easton

Farmer

 

On March 5, we participated in a Virtual Field Trip to learn about the career of an Egg Farmer.  His name is Greg Satrum.  He works with his father, Gordon, on Willamette Egg Farms in the northwest part of Oregon.  Greg wanted to become an egg farmer because he grew up on the farm and enjoyed it.  He’s the third generation to run the farm.  The original farm opened in 1934 with his Great Uncle Tom.   He learned most of things he knows on the farm from his family.

On this farm, there are more then 2,000,000 hens.  When it first opened in 1934, they had only 400.  The farm has 25 hen houses now and has two different kinds of hen. The job on the farm is to raise the hens that lay the eggs to sell to stores and customers.  They do their best to sell the eggs very fresh.   The oldest eggs that get to the store are only 72 hours old.  

We learned a lot of facts about the hens.  The famers train their hens to believe that the cage is their nest.   They simulate the rising of the sun so the hens come down and lay their eggs in the morning, and they also train the hens to go back into the cages in the evening.  The hens lay one egg per day. Hens don’t need a rooster to lay an egg.   The hens eat corn and soy and they are given a special chemical that keeps the hens healthy.

When it is time for the eggs to be delivered, the farmers have to be careful how they are packaged so they are not broken during the transportation and storage in the stores.  The eggs go on a special truck that has a built in fridge. They are put in special boxes that keep them safe.  Finally, we also learned that on the farm, there are lots of technology and machines that break the eggs to make other egg products and hard boiled ones too.

A farmer is a hard job.  It was exciting to learn about the career during this virtual field trip!

Jibriel, Harry, Stephanie, and Maria

March 12, 2013

Welcome back!  We are going to continue this fabulous project that was started with last year's third graders.  The opportunity to bring speakers into our classroom to talk and Skype with the students about their career choices is a wonderful experience.  I love that it brings the students outside the walls of our classroom and exposes them to all different possibilities for their futures. 

Again, we'll be posting summaries of our visits with photos when possible.  We encourage commenting from our blog readers.  We love to watch the statistics of how many people are visiting and where our comments are coming from.  If you would like to share with your family, wherever they may be, please feel free to do so!  I will email when a post has been made. 

Thank you for your help and support with our project!