The Key West Citizen Newspaper, October 25, 1952, Page 4

Page 4 THE KEY WEST CITIZEN Saturday, October 25, 1952 KWHS Students IN TRAINING to become a Harris is hard at work serv’ By MARGARET FORESMAN How many times have you heard the complaint of young pe ple who finish high school and ti to find jobs, ‘‘They won’t hire me unless I have experience!” For years we've had that old vicious circle -- employ people with experience the education but they never can get the experience unless someone will bire them. Sometimes young pople have had to work for a while for almost nothing and some- times actually for no wage at all in order to get the necessary know- how employers required. Well, know ye all that day is past, at least for the youngsters who go to Key West High School and who really want to learn a job while they get their ed The opportunity to . get job experience is provided by. the Diversified Cooperative Training Program which has been conduct- ed for the last six years in Ke West under the direction of W. G. Chapman, wise and able mentor and coordinator of the program, The Diversified Cooperative Training Program is a plan for training junior and senior high school students of employable age in the occupations of their choice by utilizing the community's busi- ness and industrial establishments as training agencies. Tf that seems like a lot of big words, let's just say that the high school kids get a chance to work on the job they pick out in some store or garage or office around | town, with the boss helping teach | them how to do the job. LESSONS PLUS LABOR No, they don’t have to quit school to learn to do the work. They go to school for four hours, usually the morning hours. There they take two hours of courses that are required for graduation such as English and history, so that they can be sure of ting with their ¢ hen they take two hours of courses that fit in with the job they want to learn Credit is given for all these courses. The courses which are re- lated to the job he is doing can be used as electives for college entrance if the student decides to | continue his education The afternoon hours are spent on the job ~ four hours of actual job ing fer jobs as ambulance-driving end assisting mortician, is deing such service station manager, Nurman 19 a car at the Bay jexperience every day. Mr. Chap- | have become an asset to the medi. cal profession. And in all such man -plans a series of work ex- periences for the students in co- operation with the eriences which in |tion and suc lof oceu ional requirements. | That business of learning the |operation, etc., leads on to the | student’s actually reaching what is known as “production level” so | that he can begin to get actual work experience, | For instance, take a girt like Shirley Thompson. She is now a | trainee at Overseas Radio and Ap- | pliance Ci bably |things as the stock, arranging | counter displays and other of the | fine points of merchandising, Now she is a salesperson at the store | for four hours a day, and we hear that she is a bang-up saleslady. | Shirley is getting the know-how, and she can always cite her ex- | perience at the appliance store any | time she applies for another job | }as a salesperson, | Not the least part of this whole | program is that while they are on | the job, these young people must | me the responsibilities and | | duties of regular workers. They | | are paid wages comparable to that | earned by a beginning. worker in accordance with State and Feder- | al employment regulations. } | Some of the employers, when the | | program was started here, were} | skeptical about the whole thing. They said, “After we spend the time training these kids, they'll go | off to college or get married or | quit the job for some reason or other,” Well, of course, some of the stu- dents go on to college, but in all | cases where they plan to do so the | employer is told this at the very beginning, and most employers have been understanding and rea- sonable about this. They have found that for the one or two years the learner is with them they have a trustworthy employee, and the students in such cases find that | the extra money earned is a tre- mendous help on their college ex- | penses | PREPARE FOR FUTURE | In some cases, as in the instance ts who get their training in a doctor's office, the girls have | gone on to takg nurse training, and | of stu further study fe beceme « with funerals at Lepex Funeral Home. ai. FUTURE NURSE Margi Lee Higgs, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Claren e jaret Cormack reassures little Mi tion by Dr. Allen Shepard, eases, the girls have found .| their training as a doctor’s assis- rying out | tant, taking temperatures, keeping STUDY AND WORK COMBINED make up the day’s activities for the students of Key West High School whe four of the students hard at their school work. They ai Cooper. HONEST WEIGHTS at the candy counter are @ specisity of Mary Lowe, anether of the OCT students whe the Kress store. ive Training Program. Here we s: (standing), Raiph Betancourt and Eddie ing. that | TO. Higgs, as she awaits into their actual professional tra mow empioyed et TOY COUNTER sale at S. H. Kress Co., is likely to be made + Del Valdez, smiling student salesperson, who is an efficient worker at the store, Learn To Do The Job On The Job Through DCT TWO-THIRDER now, Claude Roberts has already graduated — from being a printer’s devil since he has been working at the Key West Press. ;bulance, and generally learning ; going to know just what they are | went to college or a special school ; and preparation necessary for the the overall duties required in his | going into when they start to school | and took the training for that work. | student's chosen life work. such boys’ in training right now. Harry Pritchard ‘ian, is training at | ¢ in the Diversified Delores Valdez, Sonny Harden Most of us have known someone . 4s ss |cian than for him to work for a | Pritchard’s Funeral Home and Son- | sometime who had an o’er-ween- | day world in their chosen job, they el and the like, has been of)year or so around a mortuary, help- | ny Harden is employed at Lopez | ing ambition to take up a certain lg at value to them when they get! ing with funerals, driving an am-! Funeral Home. Can you imagine any better train-| chosen profession? There are two | for the actual training of a mor- |'Then when they finished training ing for a lad whose driving am | c ‘ion has been to become a mo and got into the actual work-a- | found that they were horrible mis- but change jobs quick or else be a failure in the chosen work, That's the thing that DCT helps the kids today to avoid. For in- stance, if Murphy Cates expressed a desire to be a refrigeration me- chanic but never actually had a chance to try his hand at it until he was clear out of school and maybe had family to support, he might get a job doing it and find out he didn’t like it at all. As it happened under the train- ing plan, Murphy has a job at Martinez Refrigeration, and he has already had a chance to find out that is the work he wants to do. Now when he finishes high school, he won't have to spend a period of time as a low-paid apprentice. He can start right in with the training and experience necessary to command a living wage and a good position. PLEASED EMPLOYERS ‘the employers think of the program, you ask? To put it shortly and succinctly, They like it! It is giving them a chance to discover suitable future personnel, to supervise the training of a fu- ture full-time employee, and to ob- tain at a lower cost a thorough and extensive training for future employees. The City Electric System is going to have a girl who knows all about the office procedures they follow. who knows how to operate com plicated business machines, who understands the finer points of get- ting along with the public as a worker for a public utility. They will have Francine Johnson who is there now learning all those things. You know, don’t you, that 92 per cent of the people gainfully em- ployed in the country today earn their livelihood in occupations other than the professions? And since |the school plant, as such, cannot | provide equipment for real experi. | If a boy wants to learn to be a i service station manager, it is pa- tently inconvenient to: try to pro- vide a service station at the school | where he can train for his future, Those boys are! line of work. Maybe they even | fits. Nothing to do in such a case | But when Frank Rivas, Norman Harvis and Ralph Betancourt ex- | pressed that ambition, Mr. Chap- | man went out and got places for | them to work to learn all about service station operation, Frank is working at the Texaco Station, Norman is at Bayview Service Station, and Ralph is employed at the Naval Exchange Station, KEEPS ‘EM IN SCHOOL One outstanding feature of the program from the school’s point of view -is that the students are ing ip school until they gradu- ate, in much greater numbers than before. Thus they are able to pro- vide the student with academic training and still to meet definite job-training needs of those who enter employment immediately af- ter graduation. Since the program was, started here w Mr, Chapman came to Key West in 1946, over 170 students ~juniors' and seniors--have recely- ed-or are receiving at. this time | actual work experience: in almost forty occupational fields. So far they have earned $70,000 as part of their school work. Most jof them work for an hourly or weekly rate, the. average wi being 65 to 70 cents per*hour {some earning as much as $100 | per hour. Each student contribu. | tes to his or her Social Security j Account in Washington, and in | many cases have paid considerable | amounts in income taxes. | Learning and earning-that’s the ynote of the program. They not only learn the fundamental skills | of their chosen work, but in their related courses during school hours / they learn the importance of things like punctuality, how to get slong with the public, how to get slong with the employer and with fellow employees, all the variety of things that ere so important te | life, but that are learned so slow+ lly sometimes,’ | STATEWIDE ACTIVITY ence in all of the vocations, the| The program at the local high available business and industrial facilities of the community are being used to provide the training ~ COMPLICATED WORK with » Burroughs Sensimmatic Bookkeep- ing Machine it ameng the éuties pertermed by Yvenne Camailier in her work fer Paul J, Sher, Jeweler. | school is a part of the statewide | Progr: being carried on in Flore (Continued On Page Five Photos by Citnen Batt Photographer SANG-UP GOOD fender and tedy repeir man is Jack Ward, shows as he grinds down 4 fender for Chavreiet Company. refuashing ot Mutberg