Gage Turner flips his welding helmet down over his face and strikes an arc on his tig welder. His job is to weld a thin layer of metal inside a series of pipes at Precision International, an Iola company that manufactures parts and equipment for the oil field industry.
But Turner is no ordinary employee.
For starters, he’s just 17 and a junior at Iola High School.
He works two hours every day, training under supervisor Chris Scheibmeir.
Turner already takes welding classes at the Regional Rural Technology Center in LaHarpe, where he developed a love of welding. His job at Precision gives him an opportunity to practice those skills in a real-world setting.
“I want all the practice I can get,” he said.
He plans to continue to work at Precision through this summer and next, as well as during the school year until he graduates and starts school at the Missouri Welding Institute.
Turner is the first IHS student under a new grant-funded program that brings high schoolers into area industries to learn specialized trade skills.
The program is also unique because it’s a collaboration between two area schools in different counties: IHS in Allen County and Chanute High School in Neosho County.
THE IHS Career and Technical Education (CTE) program offers a variety of opportunities for students to develop skills aimed at preparing them for a specific career.
The Tech Center at LaHarpe offers college-level certificate classes in welding, construction trades and wind energy, with plans to offer an allied health program next year. Students can travel to other area tech centers for programs like automotive repair in Garnett.
Students can also receive credit for math, English or science when they take specialized CTE courses.
And high school seniors can obtain internships with local businesses, learning valuable on-the-job training to help them decide whether to pursue a career before they invest thousands of dollars in a college education or trade school.
The new work-based learning program takes those internships a step further.
“If you look at the definition of intern, what we’re doing right now isn’t so much internships as it is ‘job shadowing,’” Melissa Stiffler, CTE director for USD 257, explained.
For example, four students currently serve as interns at Allen County Regional Hospital. But because of various regulations, those students aren’t allowed to touch patients or view confidential patient information. Instead, they rotate through various departments of the hospital, watching and learning from doctors and nurses.
This year, 22 of IHS’s 90 or so seniors have some type of internship.
