Green Mountain-Garwin Community School District’s iJAG specialist Brittany Raymond. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SCOOP NEWSPAPER/GMG COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Scoop – GMG’s student newspaper.

GARWIN – Brittany Raymond is the iJAG director who was nominated for an Outstanding Specialist award last year.

iJAG stands for Iowa Jobs for American Graduates, it’s a non-profit organization out of Des Moines. There are over 170 programs in the state. It hopes to prepare students with skills, purpose, and opportunities for their futures.

The Outstanding Specialist Award was for fostering an environment where students feel supported and motivated to pursue their interests.

Raymond’s supervisor Steph Flink nominated her for this award.

“She is the best manager,” Raymond said

Her three goals for this iJAG chapter are that iJAG spearheading a statewide community service project this year, represent GMG in a number of career events throughout the year, and have the seniors prepared for graduation, their future, and the confidence that their future is set up.

To prepare to teach for the day Raymond goes through her lesson plans, tries to schedule out upcoming career activities, and tries to always come in with a positive attitude.

Raymond encourages students to take career assessments, job shadow, get experience, and research their future careers.

She also gets students ready for college by encouraging college visits, going to college fairs, applying early for college, and applying for multiple scholarships as well as learning about financial literacy.

There are 37 students in iJAG in this chapter at GMG.

Raymond’s motivation to teach every day is to get to see students discover their strengths and how they can use those in their future careers.

A few field trips she is excited about this chapter is getting to try an automotive competition and the Career Development Conference in the spring, as well as being interested in seeing the students compete in the AI Challenge again.

Raymond became interested in iJAG when she wanted to come back to GMG after having a really good high school experience and they had an opening.

iJAG became part of GMG when the district entered a contract with iJAG a year before Raymond was hired – the purpose was to prepare students for their futures.

Raymond’s favorite part of teaching iJAG is seeing her students do well and creating relationships with the community.

She first started teaching in 2020. Raymond attended Cornell College where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology; she also earned a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and coaching from the University of Northern Iowa and a Master of Business Administration from Saint Ambrose University.