Preparing Students For Skilled Jobs
By: Import User
Updated: February 2, 2009
Students learn computer technology, fix cars, rebuild them, and are even working on rebuilding a car for a young girl through Make-A-Wish Foundation.Students do all this during class. While most students in a classroom setting, sit at their desks reading and writing, these students are putting their skills to work.
Adam Holder attends Midland Advance Technology Center, a school where students can learn skills needed in the work force. Holder says he wouldn't know where he would be if it weren't for this school.
"With the way everything is going right now, I've probably ended up being out in the oil field, doing nothing or you know, being stuck in a dead end job somewhere, like working in the fastfood restaurant or something like that and I would really have no where to go for school and I wouldn't have the wonderful opportunities I have here," said Holder.
Holder is just one of the school's success stories. Aguedo Najera, a high school graduate student has now been attending ATC for 4 years. Najera is currently working at a BMW Dealership giving back to the Midland Community.
He says ATC is given him the skills he needs to apply to the his line of work.
"It's helped me a lot because they have such high tech technology, that is being used out there in the field and just by these classes give me the opportunity to get a hands on experience before I go in the real world and use it on other people's cars."
Meanwhile, school officials say these stories are not alone. ATC has not only produced skilled workers such as Najera, but it also produces instant results.
"One of the things, now that we have seen from four year colleges and universities like Texas Tech and some.. even A & M, coming to visit here and wanting to recruit kids going through this program, automotive program, simply because the skills that these kids are going to need in engineering courses, are the same skills they are learning in auto tech. So they are coming and recruiting these kids," said Linda Jolly, Executive Director of CATE/Federal Programs.
Nick Gawloski, 17, Lee High School student, gives advice to Abilene on why it's important that we build a school to prepare students for the future.
"It's a great place to start during high school so you have the knowledge for all these technological things you want to do, later in college or if you want to go straight into the work field you have all that experience," said Gawloski.
Holder says, he wasn't sure what the future would hold for him until he got the opportunity to attend ATC and now he knows exactly what he wants to do with his life.
"Until I came here, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Right after coming here, that's when I decided, hey this is what I want to do with my life. This is where I want to be, I want to be working in a shop, working on cars," said Holder.
In the past, voters rejected the idea here in Abilene, AISD officials say for the most part the rejection was due to the location that was proposed.
Currently in Abilene, the AISD's Critical Needs Task Force has once again revisited the idea of building a Career Tech School and will propose their findings to the School Board some time early February.
