Claire Davis didn’t plan to spend this summer dragging airplanes across the tarmac. Now, three weeks into her summer job, the St. Albert youth is thinking of getting her pilot’s wings herself.
“I’ve always envisioned myself travelling in the future,” said the recent Bellerose graduate, and becoming a pilot might be the way to do that.
Davis is one of about 64 St. Albert Public students who have found work this summer through work experience or registered apprenticeship programs, which let students earn high-school credits while working real-world jobs.
Natasha Pearson, who runs both programs as St. Albert Public’s career education co-ordinator, said it has been relatively tricky to find students job placements this summer, in part because there’s a shortage of trained journeymen available to train apprentices.
“It’s almost like a vicious circle,” she said — we need more people to get into the trades, but there’s not enough tradespeople available to train students in the trades.
Pearson said the recently announced St. Albert Collegiate Pathways program will try to help students get more of the skills they need to enter the trades and other careers.
Pearson said her office helped students find work in a variety of fields this summer, including the trades, landscaping, and the Junior Forest Rangers.
Davis said she saw a chance to work at Villeneuve Airport earlier this year through work experience and decided to apply for it. She has spent the last few weeks working as a dispatcher for the Centennial Flight Centre, running the front desk, scheduling appointments, and helping to maintain and refuel planes. Those latter tasks involve dragging planes around the airport using a tow bar; they’re not as heavy as you’d think, she added.
“I feel like I’m a blue-collar girl!” she said, with a laugh.
Also at Villeneuve Airport this summer through work experience is fellow recent Bellerose grad Muhammad Maumin. An IT system technician, he’s creating a program to connect the airport’s flight information and payment systems, and also gets to fly in a plane to help fight forest fires.
“They’ll fly you up in a plane and you do these surveillance runs over an area,” he said, and you use the camera to identify hot-spots for firefighters on the ground.
“It’s definitely a fun and meaningful job.”
Maumin said he spent his first two months on this job working remotely while he was attending school. Now, he’s onsite at the airport, able to talk to pilots and staff and watch the planes come and go.
“It’s helped me get a lot of experience in a field I’m actually interested in,” he said.
Maumin said he plans to start his aviation engineering degree this fall at the University of Alberta.
Davis said she has learned a lot about aviation from talking with pilots on the job, and is thinking about getting her pilot’s licence in the near future. She said the work experience program is extremely useful to any student who isn’t sure what they want to do after graduation.
Questions on the registered apprenticeship and work experience programs should go to your local school board.
