By Roddy Craig and Nizhonii Wood

Around Kenai on Wednesday, roughly 100 students from Kenai Central High School scattered to more than 30 businesses to get a feel for the workforce as part of the annual Job Shadow Day.

At Kenai Fire Department, Fire Marshal Jeremy Hamilton showcased fire engines to visiting students that morning. There were little compartments throughout the truck that contained different tools, like axes and fire extinguishers.

Fire Chief Jay Teague said the job shadow program is an opportunity to show students what actually operating and working in a professional environment looks like. He said the department will showcase heavy equipment, complicated systems, and also the “administrative side” of managing a budget and large staff. Things students are learning in school, like physics and algebra, apply directly to some of that work.

“It’s surprising to a lot of the students when they come through the fire department, how diverse the fire profession actually is,” Teague said. “They walk out of here with a better understanding of how their fire department works, but also they walk out of here with a better appreciation for their academics.”

Teague said his goal is to send students back motivated to be “the best students that they can be,” so they become “the best employees or bosses that they can be.”

Right next door, students were shadowing Kenai Police Officer Chad Larsen. He gave them a tour of the police department before later taking them out in a patrol car. Among their stops at the station was the dispatch center, where Makayla Derkevorkian described the work of a dispatcher.

When a call comes in, she said, different monitors display the call, a map indicating where the call came from, and other information. She said dispatchers coordinate responding vehicles from both the police department and the fire department when calls come in, and also are responsible for some of the reporting after an incident is resolved.

“It’s cool to have the job shadow’s in to explain to those kids a little bit more about what we do,” Derkevorkian said. “A lot of people, even myself before I got hired here, when you think of 911 you think they just answer the phone.”

A 911 dispatcher, she said, does “so much more”

Because Kenai Fire Department and Kenai Police Department share a building, with a dispatch center located on-site, Derkevorkian said they get to collaborate more with the other emergency staff than at larger dispatch facilities.

The job shadow program has been an annual tradition at Kenai Central for decades, unique among schools in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District until this year, where Soldotna High School in March is set to launch its own take on the program.

In Kenai, the event is a collaboration between the school and the Kenai Chamber of Commerce. Kenai Central counselor Shawn Bultsma and Kenai Chamber Finance and Operations Coordinator Natalie Garrett work together to facilitate getting nearly 100 students into the workforce.

That work includes, Garrett said, “getting all the students where they need to go, matching the business with the students, and getting them set up.”

She hopes the students take away from the experience an understanding of “whether or not that’s really a field they want to be in.”

“It may be that they find out that they don’t want to be in that field,” Garrett said. “We just want to give them some real-world experience.”

Garrett says that the most rewarding part about the Job Shadow Program is “seeing the students learn something new.”

Bultsma, similarly, said that job shadow is an opportunity for students to learn about “the world of work.” That could mean understanding what a job they’re interested in might require of them or realizing they don’t like that job. Job shadow, he said, is a “capstone” to the career exploration unit Kenai students undergo in their junior year language arts classes.

“I appreciate that all of our businesses showed up today to support students,” he said. “I also love that our students showed up today for their commitments to shadow the different jobs.”

Roddy Craig and Nizhonii Wood are Kenai Central High School students who shadowed Peninsula Clarion Reporter Jake Dye. He can be reached at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.

Nizhonii Wood interviews Kenai Fire Chief Jay Teague during Job Shadow Day at Kenai Fire Department in Kenai, Alaska, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (Roddy Craig/Peninsula Clarion)

Makayla Derkevorkian demonstrates her work during Job Shadow Day at the Kenai Police Department in Kenai, Alaska, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (Nizhonii Wood/Peninsula Clarion)

Makayla Derkevorkian demonstrates her work during Job Shadow Day at the Kenai Police Department in Kenai, Alaska, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (Nizhonii Wood/Peninsula Clarion)

Chad Larsen speaks to students during Job Shadow Day at the Kenai Police Department in Kenai, Alaska, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (Nizhonii Wood/Peninsula Clarion)

Fire Marshal Jeremy Hamilton gives a tour to students during Job Shadow Day at Kenai Fire Department in Kenai, Alaska, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (Roddy Craig/Peninsula Clarion)