Luther Vaughan Elementary School student Joanna Ramirez gets an introduction to dental work recently while participating in a career fair. Joanna Ramirez stuck her fingers inside a mannequin head and wiggled around the mouth with dental tools.

While she wasn’t working on real teeth, Ramirez was getting her first exposure to a future career as a dental hygienist. She was among dozens of Luther Vaughan Elementary students who paraded Jan. 28 into the gym at 30-minute intervals to learn about different jobs.

Unlike most career fairs, this event was run by Cherokee Technology Center students. The vocational school regularly brings top students from its trade programs to interact with students in the county elementary schools.

Luther Vaughan Elementary students got to break bricks, hammer nails, make a mess with cake decorating tools and work with computer animation.

“We have been going into elementary schools for several years now,” Cherokee Technology Center Assistant Director Amanda Painter said. “Our students do a good job of working with the elementary students and doing activities that appeal to the kids.”

The Cherokee Technology Center has seen its enrollment increase dramatically in the past seven years. The vocational high school presently has an enrollment of 777 students, including 85 students enrolled in dual credit classes at Spartanburg Community College.

Cherokee Technology Center has partnered with Gaffney High School on Project Lead the Way, a pre-engineering program to train students for future careers in engineering. The school met all five Perkins objectives in its annual federal evaluation on student job placement, enrollment in higher education and efforts to place students in nontraditional careers.

It all starts with an elementary student’s first introduction to careers such as culinary arts, carpentry and cosmetology in career fairs. Cherokee Technology Center brings middle school students together for similar events to help them become aware of their education options entering high school.

“We have focused our efforts on recruiting and giving kids a chance to learn at an early age about Cherokee Technology Center,” Painter said. “This will help students plan when making decisions about their future and the type of jobs they are interested in after school.”