Grade six students with the Avon Maitland District School Board got a chance to experiment with some real life skills over this past March Break.
The Board's Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program recruiter Jodi Froud explained over the years the Board has partnered with the Technical Training Group to provide outstanding skilled trades workshop opportunities for students in grade 6. The at-home edition provided students with FunTECH kits to work on over the March Break and the goal was to give the students something to work on during the break but it became so popular they decided to continue with it.
Froud said some of the feed back they got was that it was really great for the students to be able to work on their project with their family and that was the whole idea behind the kits, that the student wasn't doing this alone, they were engaging with sometimes a parent or a grand parent and older sibling. And they were able to put the kit together and do it together and learn a little bit, maybe about themselves but also about the trades.
Froud said another benefit of the program is it introduces the students to some of the life skills they're going to need when they get older. She said those life skills include things like sewing, like the cooking, even with the construction and the motif powers students are learning how to read a tape measure. They're really practical life skills in the kits that students are learning at home with their families and without even realizing that it is based in skilled trades.
Froud said grade six has been an ideal time to introduce the program because at that age it's new and it's fun for the students and they're ready to engage in something like that. Froud said there are also tools in the kits that the students get to keep. She said 363 kits were sent home with this year's grade six students and that's an increase of 85 students over last year. Froud said the program is fully funded through the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship program and inside each kit there is information about OYAP and the apprenticeship systems in order to make the students aware of the opportunities that are available in the skilled trades.