Employers help teens learn through Junior Achievement

By James Edward Mills

Though he has yet to graduate, Middleton Alternative Senior High School student Alec Donahue is already employed at the Dane County Regional Airport. "I work for a company called SSP America," Donahue said. "We're trained to work in restaurants."

Tall and slight of build, the young man speaks with the self-assured confidence of a responsible professional.

"My main restaurant is Quizno's," he said. "We make sure that all our passengers have food and that they're happy in our airport."

Donahue, 17, splits his time making sandwiches and filling beverage orders at Ancora Coffee. But he also applies a variety of work/life skills he's learned through a career development program offered in his school with the support Junior Achievement of Dane County.

"It's opened my eyes to what's important in the work place," Donahue said. "I've learned a lot of things like how close attention employers pay to your resume. And how you have to watch your attitude and your appearance."

The Junior Achievement program gives students like Donahue an opportunity to learn what they can expect before they enter the job market. They learn how to build a resume, how to effectively present themselves in an interview and how to comport themselves in a professional environment once they're hired.

Jason Pertzborn teaches a class at Middleton Alternative Senior High, or MASH, called Work Skills. With curriculum materials and support provided by Junior Achievement the students acquire vital skills to ease them through the earliest stages of their career paths.

"It walks them through all the steps of being a successful employee," Pertzborn said. "The focus is on work skills and acting in the workplace. They learn about everyday situations and how to handle them."

Donahue said the Work Skills class taught him about the importance of communication, how to cooperate with fellow employees and his supervisors.

"I think before I would be pretty intimidated and not speak up if something was bothering me," he said. "I learned to speak up for myself, get things out in the open and work at making things right."

Tia Adler, 17, is also a student at MASH in Pertzborn's Work Skills class. She credits what's she's learned for landing her first job.

"I work as a teller at Middleton Community Bank," Adler said. "I was actually really scared at first. It was pretty overwhelming. But I got the hang of it. This class helped me realize more of what I can do."

With the help of the Junior Achievement program, Pertzborn and other teachers across the Capital Region give students like Donahue and Adler training and workplace experiences that prepare them for their first jobs. Area employers such as education publisher Pleasant Company and staffing firm Drake & Company partner with local schools to provide the students with hands-on experiences in the hiring process. These businesses offer up their human resource professionals to review the students' resumes and run them through mock interviews.

"What Junior Achievement does and what the mock interviews do is they get the kids to step outside of their comfort zone," Pertzborn said. "They're very nervous about it. But they buck up and they do it. The students really appreciate the experience."

Work Skills training through Junior Achievement also includes a job shadow opportunity provided by communications company AT&T. Students have the chance to follow staff members through their workday and learn what a given position might involve.

"Kids tend to take real-life professionals who are in it everyday very seriously," Pertzborn said. "They tend to respect that opinion so much more. They love to hear it from people who do it every day."

Armed with a realistic perspective of what they will likely encounter in the workplace, Junior Achievement program graduates make well-qualified job applicants, say local employers. Tom Baudhuin, operating partner of the Papa John's Pizza franchise in Illinois and Wisconsin, said it's young people like these he hopes to hire.

"Junior Achievement is a great way to learn about business," he said "We see these kids who will be working for us as our future and we're more than happy to support them."

Area Papa John's locations donated a portion of profits from pizzas ordered online or purchased using special Junior Achievement coupons. Baudhuin presented a check for $2,736 to JA program manager Beth Tomscak.

"It costs about $500 per classroom to provide our Junior Achievement program," Tomscak said. "We can only grow as fast as our resources, that's dollars and recruiting teachers to participate. This donation will help us create new classrooms and new opportunities to strengthen the workforce readiness skills of our students in the Dane County area."n

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