On May 17, the Academy Ambassadors gathered at their end of the year Spring Social event in the cafeteria. At this event, the ambassadors played games, introduced new recruits for next year, and said goodbye to those going off to college.

Academy Ambassadors is a fairly new program, started by Career Technical Education Academy Specialist Mrs. Lucy Sanchez, for students to connect to real world activities and experience the types of jobs in the academies they are in. They take what they have learned and share their information with younger students who are still not sure of what they want to do.  

Throughout the year, students have learned to plan their own job shadows, interact with real business professionals, get internships from employers at different events, and share their own personal experiences of going through high school and becoming an Academy Ambassador with younger students in middle schools and younger high schoolers. They also try to encourage  younger students to stay on track throughout school so that they can have as many opportunities to have the types of jobs they want to have.

The event started with everyone eating dinner with their groups of fellow academy ambassadors. The leaving governing team of the ambassadors got up and introduced the new governing team for next year. After all of the introductions, the fun began. There was a group of students playing cards, another group playing racket ball, and more people playing the infamous game of “don’t let the balloon touch the ground.” Music played all through the night as the Ambassadors enjoyed precious moments together.

The Spring Social is a time for these students to reflect and celebrate their accomplishments throughout the past year and create friendships with the new Ambassadors.

“It’s a culmination of all our efforts as Academy Ambassadors this year,” Kevin Wang ‘17 said. “It’s time to let loose and relax after going to outreaches for the middler schoolers and elementary schoolers, doing job shadows, and working with our industry partners.”

As the Spring Social began to wrap up and people left, the ambassadors reflected on the past year.

“It’s been great. It’s been fun. I loved it,” Allison McClung ‘16 said. “I wanted to join it because I didn’t come from Grisham or Canyon Vista and I was really confused about all the stuff and I remember people trying to talk to me so I wanted to do the same for other people so the 9th grade night, the 10th and 11th grade night where the parents came, I really enjoyed doing that. Like helping parents to understand what their kids want to do because I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I was a junior.”