Launching Wichita middle school students into the future

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Some Wichita students are more aware of what their future might hold after an event at Coleman Environmental Magnet Middle School Thursday.

The school held its first Cougar Launch Day.

“We want to make sure everyone has a chance to think about all the opportunities available for them and their futures,” Sam Belsan, Coleman 8th-grade teacher, said. “We wanted students to be able to learn about career opportunities, so we invited a bunch of community members who are successful, people who run businesses and are part of organizations and were able to talk about different industries.”

Students participated in three sessions. One focused on continuing education after high school, one on career fields, and one on community involvement.

Belsan said it is important to reach out to students when they are this age.

“Middle school is a time when a lot of people are determining what they want to be when they grow up,” he said. “They are able to learn about the opportunities and be ready to go for the future, starting to think about it now. By the time they get to high school and then beyond, they have more time spent thinking about it.”

Belsan said they called it Cougar Launch Day because they want to launch students forward.

“We want to be like a launchpad in a sense, so we’ve been using imagery of rockets and just the idea of being ready for the future, ready for exploration.”

More than 80 community partners took part in the day.

“As we were planning it, I don’t know that we got a whole lot of nos,” Belsan said. “I know that when I was planning our community session, I reached out, and people were like, ‘Yes, we’d love to roll up our sleeve, dig in and get to work on this.’ So I was overwhelmed by the positive response.”