Salem High School

Salem, Missouri

Teacher: John Hendricks

 

Youth Apprenticeships

By Kimberly Grauf  

 

In today’s society, jobs are becoming more technical everyday. Students are going into the work force today, thinking that it will be just as easy for them to get a job as it was for their parents. However, today’s jobs aren’t as easy to get. In order to get a good paying job, a person needs special training or on the job training. For this reason, the Government has introduced the school-to-work program. Under this program, there are many different programs that help prepare students for the jobs, which they would like to do while they are still in school.

       

One of the programs that our school offers is COE. This program allows students to go to school half of the day and work the other half. The students are able to get hands-on experience instead of only studying the skills they need to know. By doing this, they are able to actually perform the job they are trained to do instead of just saying that they have had the schooling to do the job. This also allows the students time to practice social skills.  A big part of many jobs today is being able to communicate with the people you come in contact with. The younger a person starts practicing these skills, the better they will become at it.

        

Another program that our school offers is Cadet Teaching. For students that are interested in education, this is a fabulous program. The student spends about two hours everyday with a lower elementary class helping the teacher teach, grade papers, tutor, test, and do all of the jobs that teachers are expected to do everyday. By getting to spend time everyday in the classroom, a student gets to see what is expected of teachers and what skills a person needs to obtain to be a good teacher.  By doing cadet teaching, people can see if they really like teaching or not. It is an excellent program to introduce students to a field of work that many times students can’t be introduced to until they are in college.

       

Our school has many programs that allow students to do school-to-work; However, I believe a new program might help students even more.  I believe if we opened the school-to-work program up to more age groups that it might help our community even more. If students could start learning more about jobs that had technical training involved at a younger age in labs in the classroom, then when they were working age they would already have the skills they needed to perform the job that was expected of them. They would already have the hands on experience and training that they needed while getting high school credits, and not costing companies money.

 

Some schools around the nation have all ready begun trying to hire special instructors who will come and teach classes about electronics and computer repair. While in these classes, the students are required to actually work on computers and fix things. By using experiential learning, the students are more prepared to go into the work force and find a job. The instructors are not only there to teach skills but also to train the students how to take the test that they are required to do before entering into some of the jobs offered today. This program would allow students who aren’t good with contextual learning to be able to put their skills and abilities to work and to make something of themselves. So many times students get frustrated with learning from textbooks that they give up on getting a good education and trying to learn. By allowing these types of students a different type of learning, the rate at which high school students are getting good jobs I believe would increase. Not only would they get a good education, but also they would have a trade that they could actually use.  For example, if a beautician goes through school but can’t cut hair, then what good did all of the schooling do?

 

The only con to this is that the companies in the communities would need to be able to open enough spots for the students to work after they come out of training at the high school. I do not believe that this would be a problem because even if our town couldn’t support the number of students graduating wanting to go straight into the work force, there are enough surrounding towns that have big industries that we could transfer some of students there.

       

School-to-work programs are excellent programs to get involved with. They teach the students of the world how to become responsible and do a certain trade at a younger age. They allow students that aren’t interested in contextual learning a different type of learning and a different way to obtain a good job. We have many programs in our community that support the school-to-work program however I believe that by introducing students to the jobs of this world at an earlier age would be a benefit for not only the students but also for the community.  [Back]