Junior Ashley Graham works with Ben Ciarlone at Funshine preschool.

BY JESSICA STEELEY
Clarkston News Staff Writer
Teachers in Clarkston’s Family and Consumer Science pathway teach about their profession and help students learn important life skills, both socially and academically.
“All kids have relationships,” Family and Consumer Science teacher Jessica O’Rorke said. “The majority of kids we see will become parents at some point, whether or not they become teachers. Even the skills we teach in our classes are for young children.”
O’Rorke teaches classes centered on human relationships and nutrition in addition to her Teacher Cadet class, which is for students who think they want to pursue teaching.
Her colleague in the pathway, Lisa Donley, has a parenting class focused on child care from conception through 2-years-old, and Preschool A and B.
“I’m going to be an elementary school teacher, so when I was talking to my counselor they told me there were a lot of things offered in the high school,” Senior Chrysoula Kondyles said.
Kondyles has taken all three teacher education courses as well as human relations and family studies. She plans to go into the teaching program at Central Michigan University next year.
Though Kondyles said she’s wanted to be a teacher since she was young, the classes helped her realize she prefers to teach older grades, such as third, fourth and fifth, as opposed to preschool.
Fellow senior Brianna Hayes took the teacher education classes as well as parenting and nutrition.
“I liked being in the classroom with the kids and being involved instead of just sitting at a desk and the teacher talking at me,” Hayes said, “I like that interactive part of it.”
Clarkston High School has a preschool, Funshine, which students in the pathway work in during class time. Hayes said she preferred working in the preschool.
“I like the preschoolers because they’re more like cuddly, they just want to play with you. They want to give you hugs and they just make me happy,” she said.
In Preschool B and Teacher Cadet students go out into the community and work at early childhood centers and in Clarkston elementary schools.
“It’s a really good experience for them and kind of confirms or makes them question a little bit more whether or not they feel like that career pathway is the right one for them,” O’Rorke said.
Completing Teacher Cadet allows students to receive credits at certain colleges, such as Central Michigan University, which gives incoming students who’ve completed the class three credits.
Though their pathway is more education based, O’Rorke and Donley said many of their students also go into human service professions, such as social work and nutrition.
“I’ve had a student become a doula – a midwife helper,” Donley said. “So, anything like that they can spawn off and do lots of other things.”

Junior Chase Brown is interested in studying to be a physical therapist and dietitian, and he said the pathway’s nutrition class helped spark his interest in furthering his education in the subject.
“I like healthy food. I’ve learned all the superfoods and how they differently affect your body and how badly junk food affects your body,” Brown said.
Serena Putin, also a junior, took the nutrition class to learn about different viewpoints on health and wellness. She plans to be a pediatrician and said the class taught her about how to maintain health.
While Brown and Putin took the class to gain knowledge to help their career choice, some of the classes help students get jobs while still in high school.
Donley said many of her students get her recommendation to work in local daycares after taking her preschool classes.
“They [preschools] want to make sure they’ve taken some type of education class, which is good,” Donley said. “One girl just got hired and she had to take a quiz on all this stuff we just covered in parenting, which I thought was awesome.”
Students from the pathway have also gone on to be instructional aides at Clarkston schools, such as Independence Elementary, O’Rorke said, though the students still need degrees to be a primary or secondary education teacher.
The pathway’s classes teach students how to communicate, write, work in groups and engage others in academic conversation, the teachers said.
“We teach you how even to read a book appropriately to a preschooler or an elementary aged student,” O’Rorke said. “Things that are skills, hopefully they can carry through their adult life.”