Greenheck Everest Transition Academy Helps Students Discover What Is Possible

Michelle Rothmeyer

Coordinator of Communications

D.C. Everest Area School District 

After months of preparation, brainstorming, and a good faith effort to define and prepare for all the “what ifs” — the Greenheck Everest Transition (GET) Academy was launched in September 2021. The GET Academy is a collaborative program between the D.C. Everest Area School District and Greenheck Group (GG), a local manufacturer, in conjunction with Northern Valley Industries that provides 18- to 21-year-old young adults with disabilities the opportunity to gain paid, hands-on work experience. The program is designed to help students explore career paths while gaining critical experience that will help them transition to paid employment in the broader workforce.

The GET Academy is basically structured as follows. Students follow the D.C. Everest Senior High academic calendar, observing the same holidays, in-service days, and inclement weather days. During the first semester, students spend a portion of their day learning valuable employability skills in an on-site classroom setting, then explore their career interests by job shadowing at GG. Based on their interests, students apply to and interview for 2 - 3 possible rotations. Students are selected for one rotation after interviewing and then begin their first 14-week on-site paid work experience. This process is repeated at the start of the second semester. 

All of the students who graduated from last year’s inaugural class are employed. The success of the GET Academy can be attributed to the thoughtful planning, continuous communication and collaboration, and dedicated mentoring and transitional support provided by all those involved.

When the DCE Special Education department began brainstorming how they could provide students with a work-based learning experience, they focused on constructing a program that not only immersed students within the work environment, but provided them with a support network that set them up for success. “We knew it wasn’t enough to simply find a suitable work environment for our students and supplement it with classroom training,” notes DCE Director of Special Education Julie Weller. “We had to identify a company whose work culture would support student mentorship and an organization with the experience and tools to operationalize the concept.” DCE began collaborating with Northern Valley Industries (NVI), a non-profit business and human service agency dedicated to providing individuals with disabilities opportunities for employment and transitional services. Both entities settled on GG as the ideal partner for providing work experience — they have developed a 57-year relationship with NVI and supported the DCE district with assorted job shadowing, internship, apprenticeship, and mentoring opportunities for years.

When asked if the GET Academy could exist without any of the three organizations, every respondent agreed: no, it could not. “NVI has the resources and experience schools and businesses can use. We serve as the employer of record and provide job development and long-term transitional support,” notes Sherri Waid, NVI President. GG provides the critical work experience and mentors. And DCE identifies GET Academy participants and provides the student wages and a specialized instructor to work one-on-one with students.

“Our role is to provide a work environment for GET participants that allows them to get a real world experience and we mimic a regular employment situation as much as we can,”  Monica Kummerfeldt, Recruiting Manager for GG, shares. “We created roles within the organization that were appropriate and suited to the students’ abilities,” she adds, and the HR team partnered with the union to carve out part-time, first-shift positions for the students so they could work with and be mentored by the most experienced employees. Human Resources Manager, Danille Bump,  has taken a leadership role communicating with internal teams and supervisors to get the work environment, mentors, and employees prepared to work with the students. One of the most critical pieces, according to Kummerfeldt, is “making certain our mentors are fully on board and committed. We identify leaders who are passionate about mentoring students and who have the interest and ability to spend time with the student. We also ensure we have a backup mentor in place for when that person isn’t available.”

At the start of the semester, students tour the facilities to get a feel for the actual work environment and the people they would work with. “This helps them determine what their interests are and to consider the noise levels or other things in the environment they may not be comfortable with,” clarifies Kummerfeldt. Simultaneously,  Sue Schlinkmann, GET Academy Teacher and Transition Liaison, works with students in an on-site classroom to develop their resumé, interview, and job skills — focusing on what they need to do to gain and maintain employment. As their case manager, Schlinkmann works closely with each student to develop and help them meet their transition goals and develop personal independence. One of the biggest challenges, she notes, is that each class of students has different needs, abilities, and personalities. “We need to take that into account when teaching job placement and basic life skills for our students and make the classroom lessons and setting unique to their needs.” Last year, for example, none of her students were prepared to get their driver’s license but this year she has students who are. Recently, she accompanied a student to the Department of Motor Vehicles and advocated on his behalf to ensure he received the accommodations he was entitled to when taking the driver’s test. “His goal is to gain full-time employment, earn enough money to purchase a car, and become independent. My goal is to help him accomplish that,” she adds. She also helps students navigate other transitional skills such as planning their meals and grocery shopping.

Once the students are hired, they join GG’s regular new hire orientation. They also take part in a small-group, four-day hands-on manufacturing training. Throughout their 14-week work experience students are mentored, guided, and supported by a network of individuals, including NVI and DCE job coaches and GG department supervisors, employees, and mentors. Amy Dettman, NVI Transition Youth Program Coordinator, serves as the communication liaison between DCE, NVI, and Greenheck Group providing consistent updates and hosting monthly team meetings. Her role is to operationalize the day-to-day experiences for students and to ensure they have what they need — everything from job coaching to transportation. She also coordinates long-term transitional services. GET students are treated like regular employees so if there is a behavioral, work quality, or attendance issue they are held to an equal level of responsibility as their peers. Dettman and Schlinkmann also turn these moments into learning situations for the students.

Now in its second year, the GET Academy has made some adjustments based on feedback from the students, employees, and mentors. “This was new to all of us,” observes  Kummerfeldt. “There were a lot of questions and ‘what ifs,’ and we knew we wouldn't be able to figure it out until we were faced with them.” Last year, they discovered it was challenging for participants to go from a 5-hour work day to an 8- hour workday so this year students transition through three work phases. As they show progression, their workday hours increase and they are rewarded for their successes with an incremental pay increase. In addition, the job skills lessons are now held on-site at GG rather than a DCE classroom to better integrate the learning piece with a work-based setting. Students also end their days participating in the “Move to Manufacturing” online course that provides basic manufacturing skills training and will help students earn a certificate that differentiates them from their peers. The program also has initiated more career-focused conversations with the students and their families earlier and throughout the process because as the students develop their skills and demonstrate their preparedness for full-time employment, “We want them to go for it,” adds Schlinkmann.

The program also has further developed the mentoring process. “The most important thing is that students have a go-to person,” states Schlinkmann. “I’m there to support them, but I don’t know how to assemble a louver — they can’t learn that from me.” Further, students and mentors develop significant social relationships. “Students have received personal gifts from employees, we celebrate their birthdays and their graduation from the program — we make sure they’re part of the organization and we take joy from working with them,” adds Kummerfeldt. Beyond gaining critical work skills, the sense of being a part of something is perhaps even more significant.

As manufacturing businesses continue to face hiring challenges, the success of the GET Academy has DCE, GG, and NVI considering the possibilities of growing the model. “Right now, businesses have the opportunity to get creative, shift their thinking, and consider different populations like at-risk youth as potential employees.” Kummerfeldt agrees. “The GET Academy has made me think about other groups who would benefit from these opportunities and may need a head start.” Concludes Schlinkmann, “Our students’ success here or at any other business makes them realize they can do more. It gives them some confidence, allows them to be a part of something bigger, and changes their whole outlook because they can see what’s possible.” Ultimately, a work-based learning model that expands the realm of possibilities for young people is beneficial across the board for schools, students, families, communities, and businesses.

https://www.dce.k12.wi.us/

Fab-ulous news: Big Foot High School, Fontana Elementary receive joint $32,399 WEDC grant to update, expand fab lab facilities

By Eric Johnson for the Lake Geneva Regional News

Reprinted with permission

Area students in two local school districts will have more cutting-edge technology for learning 21st Century workforce skills when they return to school this fall.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) announced May 18 that Fontana Joint 8 School District and Big Foot Union High School will receive a $32,399 state grant to expand the facilities in their existing fabrication laboratory, or “fab lab,” to better equip students with essential skills for the global economy.

Fontana Elementary enrolls around 200 students, and Big Foot around 500.

“Anytime we can get new and updated technology into our student’s hands, it just helps them be more prepared for the next level of the workforce,” said Jeremy Andersen, Big Foot’s principal since 2020. “These materials change so fast that we want to try to stay as up-to-date as possible, so it’s really exciting for our kids to be able to have most industry-ready materials in their hands for practice and learning. It (fab lab) is a great exploratory. It’s a wide-open field. I’m amazed most days at what they’re doing.”

Big Foot’s portion of the grant is around $25,000, according to Andersen. Big Foot will be adding a Formlab Form 3L large format 3D digital printer and associated equipment.

Including Fontana and Big Foot, 21 school districts throughout the state are being awarded a total of $508,030 in Fab Lab grants this year.

“We are excited to be able to build upon what we were able to acquire last year, the first year of our new Fab Lab,” said Fontana district administrator Mark Wenzel. “We appreciate the financial assistance from the WEDC. Our students will be able to be provided hands-on experiences in 21st Century technology skills.”

Fontana fab lab

Fontana Elementary School principal Steve Torrez said a grant awarded last spring funded a reconfiguration and resign of the school library for the 2021-2022 school year to add a fab lab featuring 3D printers, laser cutters and “greater access to greater technology for the kids.”

The fab lab is under the direction of librarian and 21st Century coordinator Annelise Gutierrez.

Torrez said an Elkhorn-based furniture manufacturer assisted Fontana Joint 8 School District with writing last year’s grant and later assisted the school with the redesign of the library space for the fab lab facility. The firm also assisted with the purchase and set-up of fab lab design software and equipment including 3D printers and laser cutters, as well as professional development for school staff involved with the fab lab.

Among the cross-curricular connections to arise out of the fab lab, Torrez noted, is use of the fab lab for art applications, including educational decorative wall designs for the pre-school area and the creation of t-shirt apparel for band, sports and other groups.

Other technology offerings at Fontana Elementary School, Torrez said, includes the school’s drone club and a curriculum expansion partnership with the local technical college in areas including drone flight, 3D design, CAD software, and career and college readiness.

The recently-announced shared grant award for the 2022-2023 school year, Torrez said, came out of a “partnership with Big Foot to expand and allow some connection from middle school into high school.”

“That will hopefully expand not only the opportunities for our kids, but also carry over what they learned here into high school and beyond,” he noted.

Part of Fontana Elementary School’s fab lab technology expansion, Torrez said, is student exposure to green energy engineering and future STEM employment opportunities through the school’s collaboration with Lake Geneva-based commercial and industrial solar developer which installed a small rooftop solar array at the school in April.

“The array of opportunities and employment that come with solar is diverse,” Torrez said. “It’s not just green energy and solar, it’s engineering, it’s construction, it’s developing, it’s building, it’s typography. We’re just trying to layer-up and expose kids to multi-multi-faceted opportunities that come with it.”

The solar developer’s president John Kivlin said development of the small solar array at Fontana Elementary School had its roots in several years of discussions with Torrez.

“We donated part of the array, with a grant from the state for part of the array and the balance the school has agreed to pay,” he noted. “It was a collaborative one third, one third, one third share. Living here in the community, it’s a good opportunity to give a little something back.”

Kivlin said the “small demonstration system” solar array will provide educators with monitoring and performance data to explain how solar works and allow students to see real-time performance.

“There’s some good opportunities for the kids to look at it and form questions of their own that will lead to who knows what,” Kivlin said.

“Scientists and engineers of the future,” Torrez replied.

“Or in the present,” Kivlin said.

Big Foot fab lab

Development of the fabrication laboratory at Big Foot High School was spearheaded by retired 11-year principal Mike Hinske, a veteran 38-year Big Foot educator.

Hinske, who retired in June 2018, successfully wrote for a grant to establish a fab lab at Big Foot in the 2014-15 school year, and later worked on securing the high tech equipment required for outfitting the new facility, establishing its engineering curriculum, and putting a SolidWorks computer-aided design and engineering application in place.

“The idea was when kids got out of there they’d have either a technical certification or they would have experience using SolidWorks and/or digital fabrication,” recalled Hinske, an 18-year administrator and former physical education teacher and football and wrestling coach at Big Foot. “They could either move into an apprenticeship or something in the field of work, technical college, technical school program.”

A “really important piece” of launching the fab lab, he said, was a push to get more women involved in the STEM professions.

The end result of adding the fab lab, Hinske noted, was Big Foot found itself having “a number of kids ending up in engineering programs and engineering schools” and more students overall “going into engineering in general.”

“All of a sudden we started to see more and more of a push towards engineering,” he recalled. “We had kids going to Milwaukee, we had them going to Madison for engineering, we had them going to Case Western Reserve in Ohio. We had a lot of kids going to prep for engineering, which was positive. It gave kids the opportunity to explore that.”

Beyond engineering, Hinske said fab labs have complementary natural applications in other fields including interior design and the arts.

An important part of the Big Foot fab lab, Hinske said, has been building partnerships with “community businesses that are supportive of engineering.”

“There’s a lot of companies here that use engineering, that use SolidWorks,” he noted. “They need people. They need high quality, trained people to help them.”

Big Foot district administrator Doug Parker is pleased with the success of the high school’s maturing fab lab program.

“It’s a great exploratory to another pathway of careers,” he noted. “We’re a comprehensive high school. We can’t offer everything, but we try and offer as many career pathways and exploration opportunities as we can. The better the equipment and the more equipment we have, the more things we can expose kids to in the engineering field and allow them to explore that career pathway, and hopefully, if they’re interested, go on to post-secondary and careers in the field.”

In regard to the current grant award, Parker said he is “hopeful” that the fab lab expansion grants will help both programs establish a solid fab lab program continuum “that is the start of a great engineering transition” for students advancing from Fontana to Big Foot.

https://www.bigfoot.k12.wi.us/

https://www.fontana.k12.wi.us/

Non-profit’s manufacturing camp trains an untapped resource of workers

By Emily Matesic for WSAW

An Appleton non-profit hopes a camp it’s hosting will help fill vacancies in manufacturing by training an untapped resource of potential workers.

VPI is a non-profit that already works with individuals who have disabilities or are disadvantaged. When an opportunity arose to continue its mission and help even more people, as well as the manufacturing industry, VPI was on-board.

A group of 10 young adults are part of Inclusion Manufacturing Camp in Appleton.

“I like it here a lot because I like to try new jobs,” camper Noah Berken said.

The idea of the four-week camp is to train and prepare young adults with disabilities for jobs in manufacturing.

Monica Allaback is an instructor for VPI. ”We’ve seen a lot of improvement in social skills, talking to their supervisor, being able to ask questions if they need to, and just learning the jobs. They are doing great,” Allaback said.

The lessons learned here are showing local employers that this group of individuals is a viable option to meet workforce demands.

By building the skills, campers say they’ve built up confidence that will help to empower them as they search for jobs and careers.

“It taught me that I can go, be what it’s like in the real world and be OK with it,” camper Keegan Glaser said.

”It gives people purpose in life. It gives people a sense of being part of the community -- and just plain old cash. The other reason why we’re doing this is, we really want to encourage people to find a job in manufacturing. There’s a lot of great jobs out there and a lot of great people to do them,” Allaback said.

For the full story go to: https://www.wsaw.com/2022/08/16/non-profits-manufacturing-camp-trains-an-untapped-resource-workers/

The Rise of Skilled Manufacturing

From the Wisconsin Historical Society

Between 1870 and 1900 the United States became the world's foremost industrial nation, emerging as the leader in meatpacking, timber and steel production as well as in mining. The nation experienced a stunning growth in the scale and pace of industrial production, which transformed business, the environment, the workplace, the home, and everyday life. In Wisconsin, early manufacturing was primarily extractive - - removing raw materials such as fur, lumber, and lead from the landscape and processing them for market. In contrast, by 1860 Milwaukee had become a center of modern manufacturing - - creating finished consumer goods from those raw materials. Its lumber and flour milling industries produced one-fourth of the value of all manufactures in the state that year.

Read more and find images, books and articles here:

 http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-044/?action=more_essay

Manufacture Your Future

Arconic Foundation and Discovery Education have partnered to provide 3^rd-12^th grade educators, administrators, school counselors and families with materials to cultivate the next generation of manufacturing leaders and innovators. New lesson plans and self-paced module are rooted in STEM principles, and counselor and family resources explore career options and provide a school-to-home connection.

https://www.manufactureyourfuture.com/

MFG DAY

Held annually on the first Friday in October, Manufacturing Day helps show the reality of modern manufacturing careers by encouraging thousands of companies and educational institutions around the nation to open their doors to students, parents, teachers and community leaders. October 4, 2019.

https://www.mfgday.com/

Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs) Program resources from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC)

https://wedc.org/programs-and-resources/fabrication-laboratories-resources/

Wisconsin Manufacturing Facts from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

https://www.nam.org/state-manufacturing-data/2019-wisconsin-manufacturing-facts/

Tools and Resources for Educators from the Manufacturing Institute

http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/Skills-Certification/Educator-Resources/Tools-and-Resources.aspx

Depth Over Breadth

Students earn about 2 percent more annually for each advanced or upper-level vocational class they take in high school, according to a new analysis. Authors Daniel Kreisman of Georgia State University and Kevin Stange of the University of Michigan also report that, rather than deterring capable students from academic pursuits, vocational courses enable students to make better post-secondary enrollment decisions.

https://www.educationnext.org/depth-over-breadth-value-vocational-education-u-s-high-schools/