Avon Maitland District School Board Introduces New Skilled Trades Handbook

by Bob Montgomery

The Avon Maitland's Pathways Team has partnered with the Four County Labour Market Planning Board and the Technical Training Group to create a new resource for students, parents, educators and community members called The Skilled Trades Handbook.

Pathways Coordinator Jody Froud describes the Skilled Trades Handbook as a one-stop shop that outlines how an apprenticeship works, what different programming is available in high school to support students who are looking to pursue an apprenticeship or learn more about the skilled trades, and then it has a list of the skilled trades and their apprenticeship pathway. There's a page for each apprenticeship and it describes the logistics around each apprenticeship, how long it takes, what some of the components of the apprenticeship are and different things like that, just so whoever is looking to research those trades gets a bit of an idea of what that will entail. The books are being sent out to students in grade seven to grade twelve.

This resource is also something the students can take home to share with their families. “There's a spot on there for simple things like acronyms, definitions. There's a lot of information on incentives and grants just to give families an idea of what the financial commitment is for an apprenticeship and what incentives are available from the federal and provincial governments.”

Froud says, given the current shortage of people in the skilled trades, they're trying to introduce students to all to the opportunities for them. They had a Fun-Tech for grade six students, they have different work shops for grade seven and eight students, and then into the high schools they have special high skills major dual credits and OYAP, co-op and tech ed, with the hope that as the students progress through high school, they'll try different things and maybe find something they'd like to pursue as a career.

They also recently took part in a Jill of All Trades event at Conestoga College. Froud says they like to encourage all of their students to consider the skilled trades, but the focus from the ministry and the province is to get more females into the skilled trades. They had twenty-eight females from all eight secondary schools participating in the Jill of All Trades event at Conestoga College. That event gave them the opportunity to try different work shops and areas of interest and then come back to their school and pursue that.