Speaker 1: See how it's getting wet. Yeah, I can start making
Speaker 1: it easier. What's gonna happen is as we compress this,
Speaker 1: it actually squeezes real tight and seals it up any
Speaker 1: water onendon now, because what does what I like to do?
Speaker 1: Like the follow Campbell's right, it's gonna prevent it. If
Speaker 1: I'm going in science, you know, you're gonna have friends
Speaker 1: and don't even have full times jobs, and you're making
Speaker 1: you know, anywhere between thirty and fifty sixty dollars a year.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, right after the apprenticeship program,
Speaker 1: buying your first house, you know I mean that. I
Speaker 1: mean the guy bought his first house. It's twenty four
Speaker 1: years old. That's Electrical Superintendent Chad Cook. And the twenty
Speaker 1: four year old homeowner he's talking about is an electrician
Speaker 1: with a great start to his career. With the economy
Speaker 1: ever uncertain, young people trained as electricians, plumbers, auto mechanics,
Speaker 1: food service, hospitality and healthcare workers, they all will have
Speaker 1: a tremendous advantage in life. On this edition of On
Speaker 1: the Job, From Hired to Retired, we visit a high
Speaker 1: school where students trained for great jobs and a lifetime
Speaker 1: of opportunity. And speaking of opportunity, you should know that
Speaker 1: our sponsor, Express Employment Professionals, is all about opportunity. In fact,
Speaker 1: over the past thirty four years, Express Employment Professionals has
Speaker 1: put millions of people to work in meaningful and fulfilling
Speaker 1: jobs and careers. If you're looking for work or just
Speaker 1: want to grow your workforce, go to express pros dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Steve Mencher with episode two of On
Speaker 1: the Job From Hired to Retired. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I went to a high school that didn't have
Speaker 1: any kind of shop class or homec or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Ours was the Fame high school in New York City.
Speaker 1: We specialized in music and visual arts, and our sister
Speaker 1: school across town added dance and theater to the mix.
Speaker 1: But I am old enough to remember that many of
Speaker 1: my male friends and peers would have been learning how
Speaker 1: to use tools and build things and and fix cars
Speaker 1: as part of high school, while girls were often sent
Speaker 1: off to classes where they learned how to cook and
Speaker 1: type and partake in other mysteries. Well, today, in Wheaton, Maryland,
Speaker 1: one high school takes the shop class and stands it
Speaker 1: on its year At Thomas Edison High School of Technology.
Speaker 1: Students staff auto shops, a busy restaurant, a computer and
Speaker 1: technical workshop, and a full service salon. They're learning about
Speaker 1: health careers as well. And get this, Every two years,
Speaker 1: these students design and build a home that's put on
Speaker 1: the market and sold. This year's house might go for
Speaker 1: say six hundred thousand dollars or more. This is college
Speaker 1: and Career Technical high School. That's Peter Kaja, principal at Edison.
Speaker 1: There's twenty five comprehensive high schools in Montgomery County, and
Speaker 1: so we draw from all twenty five and kids either
Speaker 1: come here in the morning for two and a half
Speaker 1: hours and then go back to the home school for
Speaker 1: their core academic classes, or the reverse. It takes the
Speaker 1: place of some of their electives at their home school.
Speaker 1: When I visited Edison recently, Carlos Nalda, the College and
Speaker 1: Career Information coordinator, walked me around the school. It's important
Speaker 1: to note that students here, more than five per cent
Speaker 1: of them go on to community college, four year colleges,
Speaker 1: technical schools, and apprenticeships. They're starting on their careers, but
Speaker 1: they know that more education is also in the cards.
Speaker 1: Some of them will just do plumbing or carpentry or
Speaker 1: car repairs a hobby for others. They've already decided what
Speaker 1: the future looks like, and they're getting a giant head start.
Speaker 1: One thing that's a bit surprising as you go through
Speaker 1: the school is that students are teaching other students in
Speaker 1: ways that confirm and extend what they're learning. So if
Speaker 1: you did twenty five million leaders on there, you might
Speaker 1: want to use this one actually, because this one's in
Speaker 1: milli leaders, then you can do twenty million leaders on here.
Speaker 1: I've never wanted to be a teacher or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but I enjoy helping when it comes to like cosmetology,
Speaker 1: I enjoy like helping them and teaching them like tricks
Speaker 1: and stuff on how to do things faster. Ella Miller
Speaker 1: is a natural in the salon, and, despite what she says,
Speaker 1: a born teacher helping other newer students. But her dream
Speaker 1: is to go to Hollywood and learn how to do
Speaker 1: the magic that makes us suspend our disbelief at the movies,
Speaker 1: from fake blood to aging makeup, to creating characters like
Speaker 1: Spock in Star Trek whose pointy ears have to be
Speaker 1: just right. I asked her about Rick Baker, a superstar
Speaker 1: in the movie Makeup Field, He Want Oscars for Men
Speaker 1: in Black and How the Grinch Soul Christmas, among other films.
Speaker 1: One of the schools I wasn't actually is a scholarship
Speaker 1: named after him. He's very good. My inspiration is this
Speaker 1: woman named Vanil. She's spectacular, her work is very detailed.
Speaker 1: She's always been someone I look up to. And it's
Speaker 1: no wonder. Among v Neil's Oscar nominations and she won
Speaker 1: the statuette for this one is Mrs doubt Fire, where
Speaker 1: the whole movie hinges on making Robin Williams into a
Speaker 1: believable woman. She also did makeup for Tim Burton's phantasmagorical Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1: Ella's favorite recent flick is X Men Apocalypse, where one
Speaker 1: actor's makeup blue people's minds. Whether or not Ella succeeds
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. Free education in the basics of hair and
Speaker 1: makeup is a pretty good deal. It's incredible that I
Speaker 1: don't have to like I only have to pay for
Speaker 1: like my basic kit. I don't have to pay for
Speaker 1: like a normal school should be like thirty five to
Speaker 1: forty dollars for like the one year. And this is
Speaker 1: three years and it's not costing me anywhere near that
Speaker 1: for my kit, which is the only thing I have
Speaker 1: to pay for. So that's just an incredible opportunity that
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I was able to find it. Around
Speaker 1: the corner from the hair salon, students are serving lunch
Speaker 1: two members of the community at Cafe Edison and learning
Speaker 1: all the tricks of the trade from too long time
Speaker 1: pros Jason Poddock and Teresa Marie Smith on the club.
Speaker 1: This is going to table thank you, table seat one.
Speaker 1: Did you ever wonder what the difference is between a
Speaker 1: waiter who knows what you ordered and one who asks
Speaker 1: who gets this burger? Well, for hospitality teacher Jason Poddock,
Speaker 1: one of these situations is just not okay. They have
Speaker 1: to put it to correct table number. For example, this
Speaker 1: is table seventeen. Everything's got to go to position one
Speaker 1: or position too, because a big thing we do is
Speaker 1: separate checks. I'm looking for that the customer satisfied. Now.
Speaker 1: I I noticed when I read restaurant reviews and when
Speaker 1: I go to a restaurant, there's a big difference between
Speaker 1: someone who brings the food out to the table and
Speaker 1: kind of asks you know the bidding. Oh I've got
Speaker 1: through such and such versus what I hear going on
Speaker 1: in your kitchen saying this goes to position to take
Speaker 1: it right out. Because we don't auction food. That's why
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time teaching them the position numbers,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I get confused and put in the wrong one.
Speaker 1: But it's a machine. We have a machine in place
Speaker 1: that if everyone does their job, everything rolls roll. Smoothing
Speaker 1: Chef Theresa Marie Smith runs the kind of kitchen that
Speaker 1: will be familiar to anyone who's a fan of cooking
Speaker 1: shows on TV. Besides teaching them skills knife cuts, measuring,
Speaker 1: how do you use commercial equipment, cooking methods, but we
Speaker 1: also teach kids how to behave in the kitchen, because
Speaker 1: if you don't behave well in the kitchen, you won't
Speaker 1: last very long in the kitchen. Right and and some
Speaker 1: of them might get the kind of cliche behavior that
Speaker 1: they see on TV where it's very rigorous, so almost
Speaker 1: military is that still exists, So you have to you
Speaker 1: teach them how to follow orders. I try. Some learn
Speaker 1: well and some learn less well. Blanca, an Honor Roll
Speaker 1: junior at Montgomery Blair High school in addition to being
Speaker 1: a student at Edison, is one of those learning Well,
Speaker 1: here's what's on her mind as she brings plates to
Speaker 1: six women who appear to be in their seventies and navies.
Speaker 1: I hope they enjoy the food. I hope they are
Speaker 1: having a wonderful server like my manners. I hope they're
Speaker 1: liking my manners and my personality. Blanca isn't sure she'll
Speaker 1: go into a career in food service. Her plan is
Speaker 1: to stay at Edison and take medical assistant classes next year.
Speaker 1: But for Louise, who's studying plumbing, Edison provides a leg
Speaker 1: up in the field, he's pretty sure he'd like to
Speaker 1: stay in for the long term. For me, why now,
Speaker 1: that's my future job. That's what I'm looking for right now,
Speaker 1: and it's really helpful to get classes like days for
Speaker 1: free and right now every day I see it here,
Speaker 1: I do my math and learn everything as much as
Speaker 1: I can and try to get better each day as
Speaker 1: as much as I can. As Luis works math problems,
Speaker 1: his teacher is getting ready for the rest of the
Speaker 1: class to arrive. My name is Stan holcomb Um, the
Speaker 1: plumbing teacher at Edison High School and I'm a licensed
Speaker 1: master plumber. I'm licensing DC, Maryland and Virginia. This class
Speaker 1: I've taught for what's going on in my eleventh year,
Speaker 1: and this has been one of the most rewarding things
Speaker 1: that I could ever imagine. One of the reasons is
Speaker 1: that my father was the third African American to have
Speaker 1: a master plumber's license in Washington, d C. And it's
Speaker 1: always been about giving back bringing people into the trade
Speaker 1: because traditionally the trade has always been for those who
Speaker 1: are high school dropouts are uneducated. But now it's so
Speaker 1: much more streamlined because, especially in this class is a
Speaker 1: lot of math, especially linear measurements. But one good thing
Speaker 1: about this um is that all plumbers have to be
Speaker 1: licensed and just about every state in the United States,
Speaker 1: and in order to be licensed, you have to complete
Speaker 1: a four year apprentice program. Students at Edison need only
Speaker 1: two more years of apprenticeship after they graduate high school,
Speaker 1: allowing them to save thousands of dollars. That kind of
Speaker 1: saving is a common refrain in all the programs here.
Speaker 1: Most plumbers would be in their mid twenties at least
Speaker 1: when they finish an apprenticeship, but not the students from
Speaker 1: Edison they're getting a license by the time they're twenty
Speaker 1: years old. Then two years later they can actually get
Speaker 1: a master's license, and they're twenty two years old when
Speaker 1: they're gonna have their own business, and they start off
Speaker 1: almost nineteen dollars an hour plus five dollars in benefits
Speaker 1: per hour, so every year they get a five dollar raise.
Speaker 1: One thing that's a little complicated about Edison is that
Speaker 1: three nonprofits help with fun ling money into the program
Speaker 1: for important things like fees to take tests and earn certificates,
Speaker 1: as well as materials and other expenses. One big contribution
Speaker 1: of the foundations is their connection to companies that help
Speaker 1: the students keep up with the very latest techniques and
Speaker 1: knowledge in the various trades and also directly higher students
Speaker 1: who want to work right out of high school today
Speaker 1: to representatives from a local electric contractor or visiting encouraging
Speaker 1: kids to apply for a newly minted scholarship to help
Speaker 1: them afford expenses connected to apprenticeship in their industry. The
Speaker 1: scholarship program is just to get you guys motivated for
Speaker 1: the industry. I mean, you know, as an industry at
Speaker 1: a whole. No matter which company you guys want to
Speaker 1: go for We want to recruit for the industry. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a value there because even though you may take
Speaker 1: this and go work for somebody else a couple of years,
Speaker 1: you may be knocking on my doorstaid, Hey, by the way,
Speaker 1: you know you gave me that scholarship three years ago,
Speaker 1: and you know here's where I'm at now. Great, you
Speaker 1: know what mean absolutely, and we're gonna you may end
Speaker 1: up right back on my doorsteps, so that this investment
Speaker 1: may still pay off even if you chose to go
Speaker 1: somewhere else. And that's how we look at it and value. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So to recap, Ultimate Electric is here. There are a
Speaker 1: business partner working with us, supporting the programs, and they're
Speaker 1: here to offer you an opportunity if you're interested in
Speaker 1: working in the electrical industry. It gives you the chance
Speaker 1: to participate in a post secondary program post secondary meaning
Speaker 1: after high school training program while working and being able
Speaker 1: to pay your bills. So any questions about that seems
Speaker 1: like the only question would be where do I sign up.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a little break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll visit the home these students are building in a
Speaker 1: lovely neighborhood, convenient to stores, restaurants, and major thoroughfares, but
Speaker 1: tucked away from the hustle and bustle of traffic. It's
Speaker 1: a student designed and built home that will sell well
Speaker 1: north of five hundred thousand dollars. You're listening to On
Speaker 1: the Job From Hired to Retired, brought to you by
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. I'm Steve Mencher. One company is on
Speaker 1: a mission to put a million people to work each year.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a big number, doesn't it not to Express
Speaker 1: Employment Professionals seeking a skilled labor position or administrative order.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're an executive looking for a career that fits supporting.
Speaker 1: We take pride in connecting the right people with the
Speaker 1: right company. Express Employment Professionals is on a mission to
Speaker 1: put a million people to work each year. Let us help.
Speaker 1: We'll open doors for you. Go to express pros dot
Speaker 1: com to find a location near you. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: On the Job, From Hired to Retired, brought to you
Speaker 1: by Express Employment Professionals. At Thomas Edison High School of Technology,
Speaker 1: the construction students in various trades perform a small miracle.
Speaker 1: Every two years. They design, build and sell a house
Speaker 1: and my name is staying Out. I'm the site manager
Speaker 1: at the student build house. Okay, why don't you take
Speaker 1: me on a little tour before the kids get here. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is their living room and it's got plenty of
Speaker 1: windows in it, which is good. This over here's your
Speaker 1: dining room, and this is your eating kitchen. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be a window right there at the sink you got
Speaker 1: right here. These two windows look into the family room.
Speaker 1: This area over here is going to be a deck,
Speaker 1: and then there's going to be a whole flight of
Speaker 1: stairs going down to the backyard. This over here's your
Speaker 1: family room. We're gonna get skylights in here, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna have skylights in the kitchen, also in the cathedral ceiling,
Speaker 1: your fireplaces there. Once we get the skylights in this
Speaker 1: room is gonna be one of the brightest ones around.
Speaker 1: It's early on a Monday morning and the students are
Speaker 1: on their way. They'll be divided into work cruise tackling plumbing, electrical,
Speaker 1: h v a, C, masonry, and other necessary tasks. And
Speaker 1: not only did the kids build a house, but the
Speaker 1: kids also designed the house. So one student every years
Speaker 1: entered in a competition about designing a house, and they
Speaker 1: design it. So this is a student build house, one
Speaker 1: of a kind, fabulous. How many square feet is this house?
Speaker 1: What do you call it? I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: around four thousand. Wow, that's a pretty big house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's all. It'll be a nice house. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be up on the second floor. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: a deck going out on top of the front porch. Now,
Speaker 1: someone would come and say, it was a little hard
Speaker 1: to imagine that kids, high school kids were actually building
Speaker 1: this house. Is it that they are sitting around watching
Speaker 1: and you guys are doing all the work? Or do
Speaker 1: you make them work? I'm getting too old to work. No,
Speaker 1: I know the Uh, the students enjoy it. They would
Speaker 1: rather be out here working. The teachers explain what they
Speaker 1: have to do, and then we let the kids go
Speaker 1: ahead and do it, and sometimes they make mistakes, but
Speaker 1: that's okay. It's it's a learning process. I'm a really
Speaker 1: active person, so seeing in the classroom all day it's
Speaker 1: just kind of not my thing. So once I discover
Speaker 1: Edison and the carpentry program, like, I was really interested,
Speaker 1: So I really enjoy it. It's awesome. Educators know that
Speaker 1: students have many different learning styles and for some, like
Speaker 1: Joseph Bunky, sitting all day at a desk is torture.
Speaker 1: That's why this carpentry student has been thriving at Edison
Speaker 1: and loves the daily visits to the student build house
Speaker 1: since the students build a complete house every two years.
Speaker 1: Last year, Bunky learned finish work, cabinet, treat, dry wool
Speaker 1: and so forth. This year, starting the new house has
Speaker 1: been about the outside and the basic bones of the house.
Speaker 1: I've been learning a lot about basic framing and putting
Speaker 1: in windows and putting in a floora joyce and the subfloor.
Speaker 1: So it's been great. As a second year student, Bunkie,
Speaker 1: who has flowing blonde hair beneath his hard hat, has
Speaker 1: been in charge of a small crew of beginners. It
Speaker 1: feels good to actually help someone and teach them what
Speaker 1: I know. Another crew leader is Jordan Johnson in the
Speaker 1: h v a C Heating, Ventilation and air Conditioning program.
Speaker 1: How many young women are in the h v a
Speaker 1: C program? Just one one, which is you? How does
Speaker 1: that feel? Is that? Is that comfortable? You feel like
Speaker 1: you're one of the guys. Do they treat you just
Speaker 1: like anybody else. Very comfortable. Yeah, they treat me as
Speaker 1: one of the guys. They shoot me as a person.
Speaker 1: Jordan Johnson is a seventeen year old senior at Seneca
Speaker 1: Valley High School and at Edison. She takes quite a
Speaker 1: trip back and forth each day, but that's just fine
Speaker 1: with her. The past few weeks have been busy for
Speaker 1: the h v a C crew at the student built house.
Speaker 1: We learned how to construct the duck work. Right now
Speaker 1: we're learning how to put the trunk line in for
Speaker 1: the fans and right now for the return ducks too.
Speaker 1: Jordan's enthusiasm for this work has continued to grow since
Speaker 1: last summer, when she worked for her uncle's heating and
Speaker 1: air conditioning business. Oh, we did new construction, which means
Speaker 1: put in the pipes for like like the liqua line
Speaker 1: in the suction line, like running it through the house,
Speaker 1: so that means that you got air conditioning all over
Speaker 1: the house. Um. We did service calls just mean check
Speaker 1: to see if it's enough, free on, if the systems
Speaker 1: running correctly, and if we need to fix anything, we
Speaker 1: fix it. And did they treat you again just sort
Speaker 1: of like one of the guys, Let you do anything
Speaker 1: that you were able to do. Yeah, they treat me
Speaker 1: like one of the guys, showing me what I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to do, what I'm not supposed to do, and all
Speaker 1: of the other stuff. Great. See, like you know, even
Speaker 1: in this day and age, that you will be a
Speaker 1: bit of a pioneer doing what you're doing. How does
Speaker 1: that feel? It's awesome? Tell me more about that, um,
Speaker 1: meaning like I can show other people that what I
Speaker 1: was doing influence other women to do it too, that
Speaker 1: not only guys can do this type of work. Okay, wonderful.
Speaker 1: Now I saw you or already helping out some of
Speaker 1: your classmates with things. Yeah, it's awesome. How do you
Speaker 1: how do you take on that role? Um? I teach?
Speaker 1: I take it as a learning lesson and teaching others
Speaker 1: saying that you should do this instead of the other
Speaker 1: way or given them easier, easier ways to do instead
Speaker 1: of the hard way. Great, And what does that make
Speaker 1: you feel? Makes you feel awesome? Because I'm able to
Speaker 1: teach somebody else what I've learned from my teacher. Has
Speaker 1: anyone UH talked to you about what a what a
Speaker 1: great opportunity this is? Tell me what you're feeling about
Speaker 1: you know, the chance to learn these things before you're
Speaker 1: even out of high school. Um, it's really good because
Speaker 1: you get that. You can either choose to go to
Speaker 1: college ship further you're in for you're learning, or you
Speaker 1: can just go right into the workforce, which is really good.
Speaker 1: Which do you think you're gonna do? Um, don't do both.
Speaker 1: Troy Lancaster is a paraprofessional educator at the job site.
Speaker 1: From his vantage point, the kids at work on the
Speaker 1: house today are going to have a big advantage over
Speaker 1: their peers who might go to college but haven't picked
Speaker 1: up a trade because about the time they're like twenty
Speaker 1: years old, they're making like thirty hour versus when you're
Speaker 1: coming out out of college. You may get lucky and
Speaker 1: find a job, because I know, jobs today are real scarce,
Speaker 1: and you know, these kids have opportunities where if they
Speaker 1: take it very seriously, they'll be able to find a
Speaker 1: career right out of high school, not having to wait,
Speaker 1: you know, a long period of time like some of
Speaker 1: these college kids are doing nowadays. See, I can already
Speaker 1: feel inside here's kind of twisted. Because if you twisted
Speaker 1: really really tight, and this chord might cost you know,
Speaker 1: forty or fifty dollar. Paul Ross is another power educator
Speaker 1: on the site. At the age of sixty eight. He'd
Speaker 1: rather be doing this than anything else, he can imagine.
Speaker 1: He remembers when he started doing carpentry in the nine
Speaker 1: we were only allowed to carry lumber. We were leaving
Speaker 1: allowed to pick up a hammer. These guys are really
Speaker 1: lucky because they know how to hang doors, they know
Speaker 1: how to hang windows, they know how to do rafting,
Speaker 1: they knew how to do layout. That's a big deal
Speaker 1: to be. You know, a high school student that knows
Speaker 1: how he to know how to build a six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar house. I mean, that's a big deal, a
Speaker 1: big deal indeed. As the crew from Thomas Edison High
Speaker 1: School of Technology in Wheaton, Maryland gets ready to knock
Speaker 1: off for the day, that's all for this edition of
Speaker 1: On the Job from Hired Too, Retired from Express Employment Professionals.
Speaker 1: Fund out more at Express prose dot com. This podcast
Speaker 1: is produced by Steve Mencher for Men's Media and Red
Speaker 1: Seat Ventures. Find us on I Heart Radio and iTunes,
Speaker 1: where we hope you'll leave a nice review because that
Speaker 1: helps other folks to find us too. And of course
Speaker 1: you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you
Speaker 1: next time.