Saturday, April 2, 2011

List- Work At School

 Tiny Town High has several in-house businesses that are run by classes.  The students learn to work and produce a product for the customer.  And with the price of college tuition, I can see this trend being quite helpful to many of them.

**Ink Incorporated (a computer class) produces anything printed:  brochures, posters, invitations, business cards, programs, stationary, notepads, and booklets.  They can produce a quality product for a nominal fee.  I've had them print invitations, Christmas letters, and the posters for my room.  No one can match them for price.

**T-Works produces screen printed T-shirts.  They create designs to your specifications.  This business gets a workout in our community.  Almost all school and community functions that need t-shirts make use of T-works.  Again, no one can match them for price. (Some students leave this program and head straight into some local businesses that are quite successful.)

**Our horticulture classes run a green house.  The students plant seeds and care for them all winter.  Plants and flowers for the garden can be purchased every spring at a community sale.

**Construction Tech classes build a house every year.  (And after the tornado, a lot of new homes were needed.)  Woodworking classes build cabinets for the new house. 

These are just an example of some of the job skills students at Tiny Town High are learning.  You might be wondering what happens to the profit from these businesses?  They provide scholarship money for the students who have worked in the businesses. 

Each of these businesses is run during the school day.  Students can enroll in a class that functions as a business, though in some cases the class is a two-hour block. 

These businesses were already up and running before the tornado.  They have endured some "interesting" conditions. 

T-works is part of our Art Department and is still functioning in the back half of the welding shop.  (The new art department should be built by fall.) 

The greenhouse was one of the first things reconstructed after the tornado.  The Adult FFA group organized the rebuilding of it.  FFA was taught from a trailer, but by the first winter the greenhouse was up and running.

Of course, Ink Inc. was crammed into a trailer. (I think the teacher's garage functioned as a storage area for much of their equipment and paper.)

Interestingly, the construction tech house (built the spring before the tornado) survived the devastation.  That was the house that we used for our Trailer High office. 

These businesses fill a gap in a small town and teach some real work skills to our students.  Most of the classes are by permission only and are limited to Juniors and Seniors.  Some students graduate and go straight to work in construction, screen printing, or graphic arts; others go to vocational schools where they are outstanding students. 

School?  Work?  It is good to remind students that the skills they are learning in high school can translate into a job or a career.

2 comments:

Beth said...

Sounds wonderful. At our school, they are looking at what can be cut: business tech, shop, vo-ag, fodd and consumer services,etc. You're quite fortunate.

holybovine said...

Sounds much more useful to me than calculus and chemistry!