This school year at Jonathan Alder we have a new program called the pre-apprenticeship program, which is designed to help juniors and seniors figure out what they want to do in college and or after high school because many students struggle with deciding what they want to do to make a living.
According to the course handbook, “The E.L.E.V.A.T.E. program Empowers Learners to Explore, Venture, Advance, Train and Excel for careers.” Pre-apprenticeship programs can be for a single semester or a whole school year, and requires an application.
Nicole Schrock, previously the Director of Technology and Innovation, has a new role in the district–the College Career Workforce Military Readiness Director. “[The new role is] a response to both what we see that students need in terms of more conversations and consistently through pre-kindergarten-12th grade about what pathway they want to follow for a college career,” she says.
In this new role, she has a few goals, which include “adding more college credit plus classes, adding innovato online classes, and then adding pre-apprenticeships.”
The pre-apprenticeship program is a work-based learning program. Schrock says, “Work-based learning is something that we’re also trying to be more aware of and for students who are leaving to do a skilled based job.”
Mentors are able to help students with each program. Justin Hennig is one of the mentors for students who might want to be teachers, especially if they want to go into music education.
“My goal is to give them a good teaching experience so that they can determine if it’s something they want to pursue further or if it’s something that they’ve decided is not the way they want to go,” he says. “Really, as much of a real-world experience we can give them as possible, that’s kind of how we want to do it.”
Hennig is motivated to help partially because he had a similar experience.
“From my own experience, when I was in high school,” he says, “I had this same opportunity to do this sort of thing and work with students learning instruments at a young age.
This program has a variety of pathways that students are able to take beyond education.
According to Schrock, “The state of Ohio approved pre-apprenticeships…in health, IT, project management, and education.”
Each pre-apprenticeship is a 12-point credential for graduation, and when students accomplish that pre-apprenticeship, they could transition to an apprenticeship or into the actual field. For example, Schrock says a “student who completes our pre-apprenticeship for education successfully is actually eligible to apply for a state paraprofessional license in education.
Some of these classes not only help students decide their future but it gives them a real experience of what they are learning.
Hennig says “Right now, they’ve been doing a lot in small groups and as they learn more, we’ll put them in front of the full ensemble to give them more of that big group teaching. But first, their job is going to be to learn how the individual instruments work. At least a little about each one.”
The goal of the program is to give students real-life job experiences instead of just shadowing, to give them a better idea of what they want to do after high school.
“They don’t have to go into the apprenticeship,” Schrock says, “they don’t have to get the license, but hopefully it gives them a realistic idea of what that job is like.”
