A.J. Bertram struggled as a high school underclassman until he found a program that hit the nail on the head.
He admits he missed some classes and did just enough to get by.
“I don’t really fit in very much with many kids,” he said. “I’m not as smart as most of them.”
Then, when he was a junior, he entered Waite High’s carpentry program.
Now a senior, A.J. is earning $12 an hour working three hours each school afternoon helping to build the King Road Branch Library at the corner of King Road and Sylvania Avenue.
“This definitely makes me feel a lot smarter. I actually know a lot about something now,” he said Thursday. “I’m good at working with my hands. I think a lot faster. I work a lot faster and a lot harder when I actually know something.”
Hearing students say they don’t feel smart makes Tom Dimitrew wince. As Toledo Public Schools’ director of agriculture, construction, and engineering technologies, he wants to build the district’s construction program and demolish stereotypes that a trade job is a “consolation prize.”
“We are trying to do a better job of aligning students with their skill set and their career interest, so the emphasis on education is on career development now,” he said. “We’ve sort of blindly sent students down a college-only path as a marker of success and that … is not a guarantee.”
The district offers construction programs at Rogers, Start, and Waite high schools and has enrolled about half of the maximum 350 students it can accommodate with current staffing levels.
The program varies a bit from school to school. At Waite, carpentry teacher Rob Materni helps students such as A.J. gain experience on actual construction sites after teaching them safety measures, the names of tools, and how to use a circular saw and other skills.
A.J. starts his school day at Waite, where he’s taking two English courses and anatomy and statistics classes. Then, he heads over to the library site, where he’s spent the last five or six weeks sheathing, drywalling, and installing insulation, among other tasks.
He’s one of five Waite students to find work with construction crews during a portion of the school day. Students earn a paycheck and career-tech credit.
“The trades need a lot of younger guys. There’s so much work out [there] right now we don’t have enough qualified people to do it, actually,” said Glenn Reau, superintendent with Spieker Co., who is serving as the library project’s general contractor.
He praised A.J. for his hard work, polite attitude, willingness to follow directions, and promptness.
As part of its renewed emphasis on construction trades, TPS will hold a construction camp for the second time after school ends this year and is encouraging students to talk to their guidance counselor about taking construction classes.
A.J. intends to pursue an apprenticeship after graduation, and is planning for his future and even a young retirement. Such forward-thinking goals wouldn’t have crossed his mind when he was a freshman, he said.
He’s also learned some life lessons along the way.
“When you are working for people you want to be a sponge when it comes to knowledge,” he said. “You don’t want to just be a bump on a log. … You want to be enthusiastic, you want to ask questions.”
Contact Vanessa McCray at: vmccray@theblade.com or 419-724-6065, or on Twitter @vanmccray.
First Published May 6, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
