Beyond The Classroom

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  Wai'anae, Hawai'i
  November 8th, 2013
  
  Not a lot can happen in 26 seconds, but in the United States, thats all it takes for one student to drop out of high school. However, some students do make it out in time, 69% at Wai’anae High School according to Counselor Shane Nakamura.
  
  In America, children are taught that if you sit in a classroom for 15 years and get good grades, and then sit in a lecture hall for 4 to 8 years, you’ll be successful. The road to college is perceived by some high school students as the only option, but others have found another way.
  
  “We’re lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back, to educate them for jobs that no longer exist. We have become ‘profoundly disconnected’,” Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs said on his website mikeroweworks.com.
  
  His website is dedicated to educating students in jobs that do still exist, such as trades. Apprenticeships are programs you can enter that are centered around a specific trade. For example, in a construction apprenticeship, you get hands on learning on a job site as well as one or two classes such as trigonometry and surveying building layouts to help you further understand work in your trade. A new study done by Purdue University shows that hands on learning helps people to develop a deeper understanding of a subject as compared to lecture or book based learning.
  
  As compared to college, an apprenticeship program takes about four years, and you start working right away at about ten dollars an hour. At Wai’anae High School, there is an entire building dedicated to College and Career planning, and a college presentation almost every week, but not many students are aware of apprenticeships as an option after high school. According theguardian.com, an estimated 55% of this years college graduates will fail to land a job that requires a degree, but in an apprenticeship, you start work as you learn, and progress to a full-time position upon program completion.
  
  College just isn’t for everyone. “After my first semester of college, my teachers told me to stop wasting my money. I was failing all my classes so they told me to just not come back,” said John Bator, a non-working foreman and graduate of the apprenticeship program. For him, an apprenticeship was the right choice,”I was already working three jobs, so when a friend of mine told me about the program, It seemed like just the best answer. I’ve been working in Construction for 25 years and I’m the boss now.”
  
  John started in the apprenticeship program working for about 10 dollars an hour, and has worked his way up to about 40, learning valuable skills with real-world application along the way. “I would definitely tell any kid out there that learns better hands-on to check out the program.”

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Looking Back

I personally never considered apprentice-ships as an option until we did this story. I just wasn't educated about it.


Marcela Bator, Reporter

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I wish our school treated apprentice-ships with the same respect that they treat colleges.

Raeanna Labrador-Pollick, Photographer

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