Lake City career center teaches job skills

The Career and Technology program at Lake City High School gives students the opportunity to gain real-world work experience to better prepare them for jobs.

Assistant principal and career and technology director Jennifer Odom said the program provides a link between what students learn in the classroom and hands-on experience on the job.

Odom said students go out during their regular school day and gain experience by working in hospitals, pharmacies, doctor’s offices and auto mechanic shops. When students graduate, she said, the career and technology program leads them to a job or college.

All students at the high school can participate in the career and technology program and usually begin taking career and technology courses in 10th grade, Odom said.

The programs offered are automotive technology, business management/administration, culinary arts, building construction, masonry, and health science and child development.

Every March, eighth-grade students from J. Paul Truluck Middle School and Ronald E. McNair Middle School take tours of the career and technology center, Odom said. The school has even provided tours for elementary school students in Florence School District 3, she said.

Tonya Hanser, who teaches keyboarding/computer applications and entrepreneurship, said students learn skills necessary to develop a business plan and start small businesses.

“These are skills they will have with them forever,” Hanser said.

The United States has more small businesses than big businesses, she added.

Work-based coordinator and accounting teacher Anne Andren said students learn skills in developing payroll records, employee time cards and benefit records.

“Students learn anything that has to do with financial statements, taxes and accounts payable,” said Andren, who has been teaching for 17 years at Lake City High School.

Department Chairwoman Eileen Filyaw, who teaches keyboarding/computer applications and document processing, said students enjoy participating in job shadowing and internships.

“Internships give students a firsthand glimpse at the job,” said Filyaw, who has taught for 27 years at Lake City High.

Becky Biering, an 11th-grade student in Andren’s accounting class, said she considers herself a good math student and wants to study marine biology at Clemson University. She wants to conduct research at the Great Barrier Reef near Australia, she said.

Biering said she thinks the skills she learned in accounting can be applied to her future profession. Marine biologists need to gain a great deal of math skills along the way, she said.

“Math is my favorite subject,” said 11th-grade student Jamel Cooper, who also is a student in Andren’s accounting class.

After graduating from high school, Cooper wants to become a lawyer or a crime scene investigator, he said.

Tonia Wilson, who teaches business law, keyboarding/computer applications and entrepreneurship, said students learn basic clerical and interviewing skills. Wilson said students learn how to dress for interviews and participate in career development.

Mary Wallace Phillips, who teaches health science and medical terminology, said students in her classes learn medical skills and basic health preparation skills. Students gain experience outside the classroom by working in doctor’s and dentist’s offices as well as emergency rooms and pharmacies, Phillips said.

Cody Beard, a senior who wants to become a doctor, worked with Dr. Priscilla Welch’s practice in Olanta. Beard said he shadowed Welch as she examined patients and even observed Welch as she removed a small cyst from a patient’s hand. Beard also has shadowed doctors in the operating room at Lake City Community Hospital.

Auto technology teacher Glen Matthews said his students learn everything there is to know about vehicles, from oil changes to spark plugs and wire replacements. Matthews also said students learn how to use a computer that diagnoses problems with automobiles. His course also includes a textbook component, which allows students to learn safety skills while working on cars, he said.

Blake McAllister, a senior in the auto technology course, works at Lake City Express Lube.

He said being in the career and technology program has taught him how to talk with people in a business setting.

“My students learn how to construct walls for modern-day construction,” said Calvin Cade, who has taught brick masonry at Lake City High School for 12 years.

Cade said his students learn how to pour cement, lay bricks, and build and design yard ornaments and fountains.

“I’m sort of like a starter,” Cade said, explaining that he teaches students skills they need to know to become professional at brick masonry after graduating from high school.

Cade’s students participate in Skills USA, the national organization for students in trade, industrial, technical and health occupations, according to a press release. The organization sponsors the Skills USA Championships annually to recognize the achievements of career- and technical-education students and to encourage them to strive for excellence and pride in their chosen occupations, the release states.

Larry Cameron, a senior in the brick masonry course who has won state awards, said that when he graduates, he wants to open up his own brick masonry business.

Culinary arts teacher CoCo Floyd said students who take her class can have an advantage over entry-level employees who have no training or experience. Students learn the basics of safety and sanitation in the commercial kitchen, procedures of quantity food preparation, and how to use commercial food service equipment.

Students also study the different types of food and have opportunities to practice quantity food preparation on a larger scale while still using the basic skills learned in first-year culinary arts, Floyd said.

Third-year students are those who have successfully completed the first two levels of the program and participate in an internship as part of the School to Work program, facilitated by Anne Andren, Floyd said.

Students spend two class periods of their school day on an entry-level job to gain food-service industry experience, Floyd said. Lake City businesses have allowed culinary arts students a chance to work with them through the program.