Tristan Mears, 12, said he’s always known he likes to work with his hands and is definitely “not a big fan” of sitting down, so when he had the opportunity to attend some career presentations at Dartmouth Middle School, he chose the ones with a carpenter and an electrician. 

Mears said he found the presentations useful because it helped him better understand the professions, but when it came down to it, he said it also opened his eyes to what he might not like about those careers.

“Some stuff I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds cool’ and as I really got to learn more about it, I was like, ‘Oh, that doesn’t really sound as fun,’” he said.

For eight years, the middle school has hosted a career fair for its seventh graders — not only to get them started in thinking about their own future, but also to begin making a decision on what high school they might want to attend, said Diane Massari, an eighth grade guidance counselor.

In eighth grade, students have to decide whether they want to attend Dartmouth High School or if they want to apply to a school outside the district, such as the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, according to Helen Mitchell, the instructional technology specialist at the middle school.

“We want to expose them and give them ideas of what they might see themselves doing beyond middle school,” Massari said.

Giuliana Gioni, 12, attended the music industry, film making and makeup artistry presentations.

“I went to the makeup artistry thing, and I learned a bunch of things,” Gioni said. “Like, if you don’t sanitize stuff, you can get fired from your job.”

Gioni added that learning about the process of making films and getting a job in the film industry stood out to her.

“[The career fair] was important because a lot of people in our schools don’t know what they want to do, but now they can kind of figure it out more,” Mears said.

In the past, students would pick their top two career presentations to go to and then chose a third as back up, but often they ended up not getting their top choices, Mitchell said.

This year, students filled out a survey to help place them in the presentations they wanted to attend.

Forty professionals attended the fair this year, offering a wide range of careers for students to learn about, including electrical engineering, nursing, cyber defense management, dentistry and firefighting.

Veterinarian Jacqueline Brito first attended the career fair last year and decided to return this year to share with the students what she does and take the opportunity to “really expose them to what I do.”

“I tried to talk a lot about what we do for the community and why what I do is important,” Brito said. “I tried to make it about what they know and related to.”

Educators at the middle school wanted to show students just how many career opportunities are available to them.

“We always talk to them [about] really focusing on your interests and your likes because you want to do something you like,” Massari said.