Laila Chervon was just looking for a course to fill her senior-year schedule when she registered for Jenna Whitney’s sports media class. She was approaching her final year at South Allegheny High School with a plan to study marine biology at college.

Looking back, says Whitney, “what neither of us expected was that Laila would turn out to be the rockstar of the entire program.”

Whitney knew, of course, that sports fandom plays a major role in the lives of many Pittsburghers. She had launched the sports media class to introduce South Allegheny’s students to the wide variety of jobs that happen behind the scenes in sports production: everything from graphic design and photography to broadcasting and interviewing. She hoped it would make students aware of career paths they hadn’t considered.

For Chervon, it was unexpectedly inspiring. The teenager had never picked up a camera before Whitney asked her to photograph a school basketball game. As a lifelong athlete, she had an understanding of the rhythms of many sports. Soon, she realized that she also had a gift for photography, digital design and interviewing — all activities she had never attempted before taking Whitney’s class.

“Her work immediately became the standard for the rest of the class,” Whitney remembers. “By the time she was ready to graduate, I was thinking, ‘I need to find our next Laila!’”

Chervon is now a freshman pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Point Park University’s Sports Communication program. She aspires to someday be courtside at NBA games covering basketball as a reporter.

“I always thought my whole life was supposed to be dedicated to marine biology,” Chervon says. “In reality, I’d only ever taken one marine biology class that was mostly science theory, whereas Ms. Whitney’s class was more immersive in what I’d actually be doing professionally in sports media.”

Chervon is not alone in discovering a career path thanks to the creative efforts of Pittsburgh-area teachers and out-of-school-time educators.

Roman Benty, who serves as community partnership coordinator for the LIGHT Education Initiative, found the beginnings of his career in the Shaler High School classroom of Nick Haberman.

This was years before Haberman founded LIGHT and Benty imagined working for him. But through the inspiring teaching that was happening in Haberman’s classroom and the experience of helping to create the Millvale Community Library in a former TV repair shop, Benty realized: Making your community better can actually be a career and there are caring adults who will help a young person build the skills they need to make a difference.

As a teen, Benty joined the Youth Advocacy League, part of Pitt’s MAPS (Maximizing All Potentials) program. Once the group managed to open the Millvale library as a community learning center, he began volunteering there and eventually served as the library’s first Maker Program director.

That eventually led to working at LIGHT, where he is currently shepherding projects like the Moonshot Grant-funded Remake Civics project. He is excited to be inspiring a new generation of learners to improve their own neighborhoods.

“There’s a real strength in the story of LIGHT and my own story,” Benty says. “We have a really special, unique community that is unlike other communities I’ve seen throughout the country and throughout the world. We actually have the opportunity here. Adults will listen to you here.”

The story of Slippery Rock student Riskthika Neopany has much in common with that of Laila Chervon and Roman Benty, though all three are pursuing very different careers.

Neopany began taking summer classes at Neighborhood Learning Alliance (NLA) back in ninth grade. Through the hands-on programming at NLA, she spent her high school years discovering a passion for science that has led her to pursue a degree in public health.

Now a college sophomore, she returned to NLA last summer to help teach a group of young summer campers. Some days, the work was entirely analog: Neopany helped the kids trace their various body parts on sheets of paper, labeling as many as they could name. Then came the digital learning: Neopany and her students used software to design prosthetic limbs and learned about the work of physical therapists.

The students she worked with this summer had “never really heard a lot about physical therapy and being physically active,” Neopany says, “but I feel like they got introduced to those things.”

Some of those students may have discovered their own passion for science and health, perhaps inspiring them toward a career in physical therapy they wouldn’t have known about otherwise. If so, it will likely be because of the same mix of ingredients that helped Chervon, Benty and Neopany discover their paths.

These young people all encountered educators in the Remake Learning network who are proactive about exposing students to career path possibilities. They experienced programs that give students opportunities and encouragement to learn and lead within and outside the classroom.

And each of them worked with educators who are excited about the subjects they teach and approach their students — even the youngest ones — as people with valuable thoughts and ideas to contribute.

“These stories are perfect examples of why students of all ages need more hands-on exposure to as many different career paths as early and often as possible,” said Remake Learning’s executive director, Tyler Samstag. “And they remind us just how powerful it can be when teachers create learning experiences that open new doors for students of all ages.”

Authored by

Melissa Rayworth

Melissa Rayworth has spent two decades writing about the building blocks of modern life — how we design our homes, raise our children and care for elderly family members, how we interact with pop culture in our marketing-saturated society, and how our culture tackles (and avoids) issues of social justice and the environment.