Making the Case for Jobs in the Trades
Date Posted: June 28, 2019
Posted In: Ideas, Workforce,
From The Observer: Grade 8 students from Petrolia and Wyoming were shown a path to careers in the skilled trades on a recent visit to Sarnia union hall.
The students from Holy Rosary Catholic School and St. Philip Catholic School spent a day visiting tech classrooms at St. Patrick’s Catholic High School in Sarnia and stopped in at LiUNA Local 1089 to tour its training centre before trying out skills taught apprentices of the labourers union.
“University is awesome, so is college,” Chad Hogan, training development director with Local 1089, told the students. “But, so is the trades.”
The St. Clair District Catholic School Board and union organized the session to give students another option for future careers.
“We’re not the third choice,” Hogan said. “We are a choice.”
Superintendent Scott Johnson said the Catholic board in Lambton County and Chatham-Kent has two “pathways teachers” visiting all of its elementary schools.
“Their job is to help Grade 8 students understand the diverse workforce that awaits them.”
Johnson said it was the first time elementary school students from the board made that type of visit to a union hall. The aim was to get students, and their teachers, to start thinking about pathways to careers in the trade, something schools haven’t traditionally focused on.
Hogan told the students about construction trades and unions, and led a tour of the training centre that included the chance to try out connecting pipes, concrete finishing and assembling scaffolding.
“Our system has done very well preparing students for college and university,” Johnson said.
But, the story is different when it comes to apprenticeships and the trades,
“The reality is we all have university degrees,” he said about school teachers.
“When we’re telling stories in math class, it’s easier to tell them about college and university pathways, than those in the apprenticeships.”
Community partnerships, like the one with LiUNA, allows the school system “to start weaving stories into our curriculum about different pathways,” Johnson said.
“Every pathway is equally dignified – it doesn’t matter if you go straight to work, or into the trades, or university or college.”