By Allison Carrier

While his high school days are long over, Ryan Marshall has ended up walking past rows of lockers to his office each day. That’s because he works for the Town of Scarborough as an IT Field Technician and is assigned to – you guessed it – Scarborough High School. Being in school is a little different for him nowadays, acting in a quasi-teacher/tech support capacity. He started working for the Town’s IT department four years ago to help launch the high school’s Student Help Desk. Here’s a typical workday for him:

5:00-7:00am: Ryan starts the day early for a quiet routine morning. It starts with coffee, breakfast, and an occasional gym workout. He likes to arrive to work around 7/7:30am to get set up before school starts at 8:00am.

8:00am: It’s first block, and a student is scheduled to station the Help Desk. There are nine students in the Help Desk program, all accepted last spring after a comprehensive application and interview process. They did trainings in the summer before the school year started. Students in the program are each scheduled to cover the help desk throughout the week during their study hall. The student in this morning reviews new tickets submitted online. One request is from a teacher who is trying to play a video for the class, but the audio isn’t working, so Ryan and the student go offer their support.

9:15am: There’s a break before the next block, which is often when students come in with laptop issues. Ryan checks for physical damage and goes through the systems for any errors with hardware or software.

With the next block, a new student comes in. The students in the program range from freshman up through seniors. Everyone who has joined the program has continued into the next year, a testament to its value for them. The program supports the school’s IT needs while helping students build customer service skills and giving them hands-on experience. They follow a curriculum for the CompTIA A+ certification exam, which gives students career-relevant skills needed for the field of cyber security. Ryan sets the new student up on an instructional portion of the curriculum with video trainings. Then they review it and practice with equipment in the IT room. Today’s topic is troubleshooting printers, so they take one off the shelf for a closer look.

10:45am: In the next block, a senior student is working on a year-end capstone project. As a team, they’re going to do a live “capture the flag” event where one team tries to attack a network and the other defends a network. He started with the program as a freshman when it began in 2022, so him nearing graduation is bittersweet for Ryan. Ryan has seen the influence this program has on the students. One student started with not much confidence; now he’s come out of his shell and become a mentor to others.

12:30pm: For lunch, Ryan heads over to the Town Hall to connect with his colleagues in the IT department. The team dynamic is strong despite being in different locations throughout the municipal and school campus.

1:15pm: There’s one more block after lunch. Ryan works with another student in the program on a similar agenda of repairs, help desk tickets, and learning skills for the certification. They also shadow him as he troubleshoots bigger help desk ticket issues.

2:30pm: Once each week the full group from the Student Help Desk program meets after school. They’re currently preparing next year’s devices for all high school students. There are 1,100 new devices that need to be taken out of the box and set up with software.

4:30pm: Ryan wraps up his workday and takes the long way home to decompress. He starts making dinner around 6. Before pursuing a career in technology, Ryan worked in professional kitchens for many years. He’s just starting to enjoy cooking again.

7:30pm: Now that it’s finally getting nice out, Ryan and his family go for a walk in the big hayfield by their house before winding down for the night.

Thanks to Ryan and Scarborough’s IT department, the Student Help Desk program has been very successful in giving Scarborough students this opportunity. They started a Student Help Desk at the Middle School this past school year and have been asked to speak at an upcoming industry conference on technology and education, hopefully to inspire other districts to follow suit.

Allison Carrier is Marketing and Communications Manager for the Town of Scarborough.

(Photo courtesy of Town of Scarborough)