BRUNSWICK — The Brunswick School Department is seeking community members who might be interested in sharing their skills, work or expertise with students to help “apply the classroom to the real world” as part of a new community resource database, according to Rick Wilson, community outreach and extended learning opportunity coordinator.

“We want to identify community members who may be willing to share their expertise with our students and teachers,” Wilson said in an email. “This sharing could take different forms including practical applications of learning and skills, extended learning opportunities or even community service opportunities.” 

In a brief survey, community members identify their work or skill set, as well as if they are interested in hosting a class field trip at their sites, host a student job shadow, appear as a guest speaker, participate in a career day or job fair and/or be a professional mentor. Responses will be used only in the district, he said in an interview, adding that so far about 100 people have responded.  

The responses range from an opera singer to a field scientist and hit many of the jobs in between, he said, and each can offer a way to not only help students visualize what a career in each of the fields may look like, but also start building networks early. 

“The workforce is changing,” Wilson said, and he and others in the district began to wonder, “how can we capture all the cool things people are doing for work?” 

“It’s necessary for us in the district to try to capture, what does the workforce look like? What are the different types of jobs people are doing? We’ve never had a way to capture that before,” he said. 

Now, with some of the responses and hopefully more to come, they will start cataloging the answers and brainstorm how they can best utilize the resources in grades K-12.  

“It’s all about trying to extend those learning opportunities and make curriculum connections to the real world,” he said. 

The survey is available at https://forms.gle/HnneK9XELrwa6Cpn6.