It’s officially the time of year for Wisconsin high school sophomores and juniors and businesses to start thinking about Youth Apprenticeship.
The Youth Apprenticeship (YA) program is an opportunity for high school juniors and seniors to get class credit for working a real paid position at a local business.
Businesses around participating high schools in the YA program can apply to become a business partner with a local high school.
MPSD Superintendent Lee Thennes, Lincoln High School YA Coordinator Bonnie Proszenyak, and YA intern at Seehafer Broadcasting Zylia Kleinfeldt spoke about the YA program on WOMT’s Be My Guest program, noting that the program has grown immensely in the past few years state-wide, but especially at Lincoln High School.
“We’ve seen some incredible growth in the program over the last years,” Proszenyak explained. “43% of our juniors and seniors were involved in some type of youth-based learning program which includes Youth Apprenticeship. So, it has been very strong in our school to be preparing our students for what’s next.”
Proszenyak said the YA program is a great way for these students to get themselves involved in the workforce.
“They spend part of their school day out in the community working with a business partner, exploring some type of career area that they’re interested in,” Proszenyak noted. “It really gives them the chance to see, is this a career I think I may want to pursue in the future? It educates them on the great opportunities that we have available in our local community with our local business partners, and it helps sometimes students figure out what do I not want to do, what’s not a good fit for me.”
MPSD Superintendent Thennes has seen the benefits of the YA program firsthand from a principal, parent, and now superintendent perspective.
“My daughter Samantha is a senior. She’s a YA. She works for the school district as an aide at Madison Elementary School,” he revealed. “My son who’s a junior, Carter, he works at Skana Aluminum for his YA in the business side of things. So, I can see you know, not only as someone who is familiar with the program and having been the principal at Lincoln High School, I’ve also seen the tremendous advantages and learning opportunities from my own kids.”
The YA program doesn’t only benefit the participating high school juniors and seniors, it also benefits the participating businesses and Manitowoc overall,
“It’s also a great service to our community,” Thennis said. “I think about the number of business partners we have and very and very loyal mentors to our kids who develop these very strong relationships and ties. And I think every strong community needs to have connections to their community and I think this is one of the ways we can do that. There’s a margin of kids that may be able to stick around in our community and be productive members of our community here, and we can sustain and even grow, and that would be another hope that we have through programs like this.”
More information on the Youth Apprenticeship program can be found at yawisconsin.org or the Manitowoc Lincoln High School YA website, shipsya.org.
