While a crew builds, paints and hammers its way through the month of May, they’re building their future with the Trade Awareness, Skills, and Knowledge program – one that’s been recognized as innovative in Canada.
The Peninsula-developed program earned an innovation award from the Ashoka Changemakers and the Counselling Foundation of Canada and Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling.
Saanich School District career counsellor Wendy Walker, and Stu Rhodes, the career counsellor and apprenticeship co-ordinator for the school district crafted the Trade Awareness, Skills, and Knowledge program that launched earlier this year. Last week in Gatineau, Quebec, the pair was honoured at a summit after TASK earned a national honour for work with aboriginal students.
“Our program was selected from 266 applicants who submitted. We were selected in innovation in career and workplace education programs,” said Walker.
It fits right in with the endeavours in education – personalized learning.
“It really affirms that what we’re doing is moving in the right direction,” Rhodes said. “This s a real hallmark program in terms of personalized learning. It really meets them at their level and brings them up. It recognizes that different style of delivery.”
TASK is a trade awareness program that introduced 19 non-graduated, mostly First Nation students to seven different construction trade disciplines giving them employment skills, re-engaging them in education,and moving them closer to graduation.
“While on the surface this venture may seem like an excellent education and employment program, in reality, it is much, much more than that. It is bringing hope and inspiration to an entire community,” Rhodes said.
“We’re building self esteem for young people. It’s self pride, they’re showing pride every day showing up. For that I’m proud of them,” said Pauquachin chief Bruce Underwood.
The Pauquachin partnership is among the key components of the program.
“It’s not something we were striving for, the accolades. … I think it’s well deserved, but I don’t think it’s something we thought about at the beginning,” said Underwood. “It has had an impact. It’s affecting 19 different families. I’m excited for them and I’m proud of them.”
Waker and Rhodes expected a 50 per cent attrition rate in the program.
“We’ve had to remove one student for attendance issues, and we’ve had one student leave because he got full time employment in his trade,” Walker said.
That, Rhodes added, is the first indicator of a successful program.
“If the students are showing up we can take them forward,” he said. “The fact that students are showing up regularly speaks volumes to what they think about the program. So they find it valuable.”
The Pauquachin community too appears to see the value in their partnership that includes hosting class work in its West Saanich Road hall.
“The community members have been popping their heads in. … It’s having such a positive impact right within their community,” Walker said. “Pauquachin has been really, really good about sharing their space.”
Those community connections, funding and trades businesses willing to support the trainees, are critical to the program. Rhodes expects they’ll be able to find all those pieces for another round of training.
“The program is going to run again, we’re just not sure the exact start date,” Rhodes said. “Everybody’s rallying around it, but we have to pull the pieces together again and say go.”
The program received $1,000 cash award along with the accolades.
“Which is really a small part of what we were there for,” Rhodes said. “We’re going to offer it as scholarship to the students that graduate from the program.”
They haven’t decided yet how many awards or students that money will represent.
As the class portion of the TASK program prepares to wind down at the end of May, progress is evident in the program.
“For those people in the program they just show up every day and try their best. They’re just doing what they know to do,” said Pauquachin chief Bruce Underwood. “Some of them are looking at career opportunities. They’re not just jobs. They’re going to take them into retirement.”