The Specialist High Skills Major program at Algonquin Secondary School in North Bay continues to grow.
On Monday the high school officially launched the third installment of the program.
Arts and Culture will now be added to the mix joining the Health and Wellness and Business programs which were added several years earlier.
Melissa Daub is the lead in the high skills business program and credits the program with helping to steer students to a better-informed career choice.
Daub says most of that is attributed to the students getting first-hand experience through a co-op component that is part of the high skills program.
“It gives them more learning experiences and tells them is this something they want to do later on,” Daub said.
Daub says it’s common for students to say they want to become something like an accountant and then study accounting-related courses after high school.
Then after graduating and getting into the real world of accounting, some former students realize it’s not what they thought it was going to be.
“But if you get a co-op placement and work in an accounting office you might discover that a lot sooner and decide this is not the field you want to be in,” Daub said.
The co-op placements is a major component of the high skills program, but it isn’t the only requirement.
Daub says the students take certain business classes and courses that are related to business and must also study CPR and Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS).
Daub says she brings special guests into the classroom but the high skills program gives students that first-hand experience by getting them into the field, an experience she can’t create in a classroom setting.
As examples, some past students got to go to a toy company in Toronto and took part in workshops where they met with business leaders and owners.
On another occasion, students got to make a two-minute pitch on work-related ideas.
Daub says students learn from these experiences including how the business world operates.
“It’s a real-life experience where they get a chance to meet and network with people,” she said.
“And they get to experience real life, what business is, and that’s the really exciting thing about this program.”