Aaron Daugherty usually shows up to school in baggy jeans and a T-shirt. Last Friday, he wore a white button-down shirt and a necktie. He had a job interview that day—in a classroom at Tomales High, where he’s in ninth grade.
Aaron was a shoo-in for a film and cinematography position with the True West Film Center in Healdsburg, but he still had a few jitters. The questions and answers were just for practice, a warm-up for life after school and the challenges of finding a job in the real world.
It’s part of the Magnolia Project, a Sonoma-based mentorship program that is making its West Marin debut this year, starting in Tomales but moving south in the spring, when eighth-graders from West Marin, Nicasio, Bolinas-Stinson and Lagunitas Schools will participate. The program is looking for compassionate mentors to work with them as part of a four-day career explorations program.
Up in Tomales, virtually every business is participating, as are some just beyond its borders, like the film center, Hog Island Oyster Company and All Hands Ecology.
Aaron and his classmates are spending the semester with mentors in an array of fields ranging from agriculture to cooking to firefighting. Aside from a four-day immersive experience in the workplace in December, most of the work takes place in their English classrooms, which have replaced Huck Finn with vocational ed. Students spend time investigating career options and working on skills such as resume writing and interviewing.
“I’m very, very interested in film,” said Aaron, whose parents work at the nearby United States Coast Guard Training Center in Two Rock. “I’d say it’s one of my top choices of things that I’d like to do in the future.” His favorite genres are horror, mystery and fantasy, and he aspires to write or direct someday.
The Magnolia Project was founded by Gianna Biaggi, a 30-year-old whirlwind who recruited the West Marin mentors by knocking on doors and making cold calls. She’s a former Sonoma private high school English teacher whose classroom was upended by the pandemic, and she found Zoom to be a lousy pedagogic substitute.
“The pandemic really hurt the kids,” she said. “They missed two years of school, and so now some eighth graders really present more like a fifth grader.”
In the aftermath of the pandemic, chronic absenteeism spiked at schools across the country. “It felt like school became optional during Covid, and we needed a way to physically get students back in the classroom and get them doing cool, hands-on stuff,” she said.
The Magnolia Project was born with that mission in mind. “There’s a lot of research about how eighth and ninth grade are really critical times for reengaging students in school,” Ms. Biaggi said. “The sooner that students feel like they have a reason to come to school, the sooner they feel like their academic work is engaging, the easier it is for them to stay the course.”
In a community like Tomales, where there are no strangers, it seems that everyone is on board. Senior Fire Chief Tom Nunes was at the high school on Friday, interviewing three students considering careers as first responders.
“Today was a great first introduction,” he said. “Hopefully first-day jitters and awkwardness have been assuaged.”
The interviews are make or break, but it takes a major foul-up for students to disqualify themselves. “Maybe you start swearing or show up with a Budweiser shirt on,” Ms. Biaggi said. “Just making a poor choice, right?”
Capt. Nunes and his crew will expose students to different tools and tactics along with the firefighter lifestyle, from cooking, eating and working out together to coping with the stress of the job.
“It takes a toll on the body and the mind,” he said. “So it won’t just be the cool stuff. We’re going to try and expose them to as much information as we can.”
To learn more, go to www.magnolia-project.org.