And Will Continue to I Am Looking for Part time Work in the Afternoons

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/learning/should-all-high-school-students-have-part-time-jobs.html

Student Opinion

Should All High School Students Have Part-Time Jobs?

What can teenagers learn from working?

Credit... BjelicaS/Getty Images

Sept. 22, 2022

Have you ever had a part-time job? If so, where did you work and what did you do? If not, do you want to have this experience by the time you graduate from high school? Why or why not?

What do you think teenagers can learn from working?

In the Opinion essay "The Best Extracurricular May Be an After-School Job," Pamela Paul, a columnist who worked multiple jobs in high school during the late 1980s, presents an argument for why students today should work:

Lots of American teenagers need to work after school to help support their families. But there's a case to be made that those who don't need to work should get a job anyway.

Conditions couldn't be more optimal. Unemployment, close to a 50-year low, has made the kinds of jobs well suited to kids — no prior experience, minimum wage, part-time — more widely available.

Yet fewer teenagers work nowadays than a generation ago. The share of teenagers in the work force has risen from a low of roughly a quarter in 2010 to about a third of older teenagers holding down a job of one kind or another since the pandemic. But when I was in high school in the late 1980s, around half of 16- to 19-year-olds held jobs. Gen X parents who grew up working after-school shifts at the local drugstore often lament the fact that their own children haven't always had the same opportunities.

Many instead favor an array of extracurricular activities that burnish their college applications, like student government and peer tutoring. This may be a mistake even for those parents and kids more concerned about college admissions than about what happens after that. Consider that having an afternoon job cultivates skills like time management and instills a sense of independence and personal responsibility — attributes that many college administrators say some students today lack.

But after-school jobs teach more concrete lessons as well. Personally, I learned more from working outside school — starting with three afternoons a week when I was 14 and ending with three jobs juggled, seven days a week, my senior year of high school — than I did in the classroom.

Students, read the entire essay, and then tell us:

• Are you convinced by the argument that teenagers should get an after-school job, whether they need one or not? What do you think are the author's most persuasive points? Is there anything you think she overlooked — either in support of or against teenagers working?

• Ms. Paul lists what she sees as 10 valuable things she learned from the part-time jobs she held as a teenager. Which do you think are the most important? If you have had a job, what would you put on your own list of lessons from working?

• Would you have time for a part-time job if you needed or wanted one? Would it be worth giving up extracurricular activities, studying time or your free time to get a job instead? Why or why not?

• Based on what you know about college admissions, do you think admissions committees value work experience enough? Do you think they should value it more than they do? Would you be more likely to get a job if they did?

• Ms. Paul says that she learned more at work than she did in the classroom. Have you ever felt that way about an experience you had outside of school? What did you learn about yourself, others or life in general?

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Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classrooms.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/learning/should-all-high-school-students-have-part-time-jobs.html

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