Timothy Allan Johnston
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The ATA Magazine - Editor’s Notebook

Volume 65, Nov/Dec 1984

 (My first Editor's Notebook as editor of the ATA Magazine)

 

                                            Experiencing the Real World of Work

            Long ago and far away (or so it sometimes seems), in a classroom in Wilson Junior High School in Lethbridge, I was faced with designing a course for a “B” option. “B” options, those electives that are teacher developed, as opposed to the “A” optional courses for which curriculum had been developed, were the bane of many teachers’ existence. But I looked upon them as an opportunity to create unique programs that reflected my own interests. The idea that I settled on that year became known as Community Industry.

            How the 25 Grade 9 students who showed up for the class that September chose my course, I’ll never know. They didn’t know what they were in for, and I wasn’t too sure myself. The central idea of the course was to have the students place themselves in jobs at various manufacturing companies in the city, spend a lot of their option time working at the plants and then hold an industrial fair featuring all the products at the end of the year. The remaining class time was to be devoted to lectures, workshops and guest speakers.

            I wanted my students to experience firsthand the “real world of work.” First they spent some time studying manufacturing in Lethbridge, listing factories and deciding where each of them would like to work. After that, the students had to contact the chosen plant on their own, explain the program to the manager and get themselves integrated into the manufacturing workforce.

            When I reflect on that course today, I wonder where I ever got the nerve to start it. What still amazes me is how well it turned out. All of the class members found their own placements and settled into jobs helping to make everything from telephones to beet harvesters. The response from the manufacturers was exceptional; each one developed custom in-plant programs for their students.

            The culmination of the year was the industrial fair. We set it up at the school on a Friday afternoon and opened the fair on Saturday. The schoolyard was filled with motor homes, farm truck bodies, cultivators, land levelers, vacation trailers and garbage trucks, all manufactured in Lethbridge. The school gymnasium was crowded with exhibits of small items. Excited about the displays and particularly proud of the products they had helped build, the students demonstrated their products and answered questions from visitors about the company with which they had worked.

            Community Industry was, to a large extent, a work-experience program. As a second year teacher at the time, I was blissfully unaware that work-experience programs operated at the high school level. I had begun the program because I wanted my Grade 9 students to experience applying for a job, showing up regularly for work and learning the importance of industry and commerce to their community.

            The first two articles in this issue of the magazine look at different sides of the education-business relationship. Norman Goble, secretary general of the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession, does not see the marketplace as an appropriate model for education. On the other hand, Russell E Harrison, president of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, believes a business-education partnership is beneficial to both parties.

            Whatever your view of this issue happens to be, remember that there is a huge pool of goodwill out there in your business community. Whether you take advantage of it directly, as I did twelve years ago, or simply tap into it from time-to-time, consider that goodwill a precious teaching resource.