CHEEKTOWAGA – Around 20 students from Maryvale High School’s NAF Academy of Hospitality and Tourism spent the day Tuesday at Prior Aviation for an annual Fly-in Career Fair.
The program, which is in its second year at the school, allows students to meet with representatives from the NFTA, Prior Aviation, Delaware North, JetBlue Airways, and Enterprise Car Rental to find out what opportunities are available to them in the hospitality fields.
This is the “hands-on” portion of the program which offers students at Maryvale a three-year pathway to achieve mastery in the hospitality and tourism fields.
“They take a plethora of classes, and then we put them in internships, and they get exposure like this through all the connections that we made with our community,” said NAF Academy lead teacher Mark McNess.
Maryvale sophomore Jamie Kolarch is interested in becoming a flight attendant once she graduates from high school.
“Today I got to look at aircraft behind the scenes,” said Ms. Kolarch. “I get to see it from a point of view from when there is nobody on the plane, and I get to see what it actually looks like clean and not being in use.”
Currently, 39 students participate in the program. The school interviewed 25 students to join the program next year.