Shorewood Kids Get Glance Into Different Career Options

Editor's Note: As part of the Shorewood BID's "Kids Take Charge" event, 12-year-old Grace Dresang, and 11-year-old Patrick Renane and Ruba Saqer, all of Shorewood, shadowed Shorewood Patch Editor Adam McCoy, took photos, conducted interviews and wrote the story below.

Students all over Shorewood were able to investigate different job fields at local businesses Thursday.

During the Shorewood Business Improvement District’s Kids Take Charge event, students were selected to work with businesses, based on their interests.

At So Cool Crafts, origami instructor and owner Seon Joo So, who has been practicing origami since 1997, was teaching 12-year-old Dayon Harris-Hall and 10-year-old Naomi Raicou how to fold octagons with colorful, recycled paper that makes the origami pop out.

Naomi said she likes to do arts and crafts.  

“I look at books to make origami at home,” she said.

Both Naomi and Dayon said they were interested in taking future classes at So Cool, which offers courses on paper folding.

Meanwhile at Goody Gourmets, owner Jackie Chesser was teaching Maddie Gravelle, 12, and fifth-grade Lake Bluff students Devin Cooper and Maggie Meissner to make and wrap chocolaty goods.

They were learning how to make chocolate-covered pretzels, dipping the pretzels in different types of chocolate, along with raisin and almond clusters.

“I like popcorn and wanted to do something with food,” Devin said.

While Maddie said, “I like anything sweet, and have never been here before, so I wanted to try it out.”

While students were at Goody Gourmets dipping sweets, students Peter Nickolaus and Kennedy Perez where at the NaNa Asian Fusion making sushi.

Peter, 10, chose NaNa because he thought it would be fun to learn how to make sushi.

“It was harder than I expected, because there are a lot of steps you have to follow,” he said. “There were a lot of tools we had to use.”

Kennedy, 10, said she felt good about eating the sushi because she was able to make it.

“I didn’t know how to make sushi and I never tired, so that’s why I wanted to do this program,” Kennedy said.

Peter tried the octopus’ arms at NaNa and said it was rubbery, but good.