14 | FORWARD JANESVILLE grade students. Youth Apprenticeship offers students the chance to expand upon what they learned in CWC. “Our hope is that if a student is interested in the trades and they participate in CWC, they might then move on and do a Youth Apprenticeship after that,” Thurner said. The Youth Apprenticeship (YA) program offers students the chance to gain experience in a trade they’re interested in. Students get placed with a company and are allowed to adjust their school schedules to attend their apprenticeship while receiving credits for their work. In many cases, the students are hired at that company after graduation. “It’s a pathway right into work where you start under 18,” Phillips said. This is equally important for the companies themselves, too, as their workforce begins retiring at a higher rate than can be replaced. “Our belief is that it [work-based learning] builds their talent pipeline,” Thurner said. “It builds their workforce.” Even if a student decides not to pursue a particular pathway they did an apprenticeship in, though, Thurner said she still sees the success of the program in that. “The student might say, this is not for me,” she said. “But isn’t it great that the student can determine that when they’re so young still?” By exposing students to opportunities earlier, she said, students can determine what they really want to do before they invest additional time and resources into accomplishing something they may not like. IT TAKES A WHOLE COMMUNITY As they look ahead to the future of work-based learning, both Phillips and Thurner said they would like to see more businesses join the program. This requires getting organizations to think long-term and more proactively about their hiring goals for the future. They are also working hard to dispel the concern some companies have about working with students under the age of 18. Hermanson said that Phillips and Thurner can work with companies who have this concern to figure out a solution. She added that students can also participate by simply job shadowing at the company and learning more about the organization itself. Phillips is hopeful that connecting more students to more local businesses will encourage them to stay in the area after they graduate, but he understands that accomplishing this will be a team effort. “It really takes everyone from parents and families right on through the education system, business and industry and your civic leadership all working together to pull this wagon in the same direction,” he said. Thurner echoed the importance of these partnerships. “For these kinds of work-based learning programs, it really takes a whole community,” she said. “The School District of Janesville couldn’t do this without the partnership of Forward Janesville, without our business community. So it really is a communitywide initiative in order to make these programs work.” And this alignment could open the door for even more opportunities. Thurner said that as more businesses commit to partnerships, she hopes that this work can expand to include even more work-based opportunities for students, like a Craftsman with Character but with a medical slant, for example. “I mean, the opportunities are endless,” she said. Are you a local employer that wants to get involved in work-based learning opportunities? Reach out to Greg Phillips, Forward Janesville’s Workforce Development Coordinator, at greg@forwardjanesville.com. At the time of publication, Aimee Thurner is no longer with the School District of Janesville. In the photo above, students learn about opportunities at United Alloy. A Youth Apprenticeship student perfects his mechanic skills at Blain Supply. “It really takes everyone from parents and families right on through the education system, business and industry and your civic leadership all working together to pull this wagon in the same direction.”
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