Espanola High School program offers career choices
Posted by admin - 14/12/09 at 05:12 amRoss Raguth
from Mid North Monitor
The Espanola High School Cooperative Education Program is a big success. That can be attested to by several former students, three of which all work at the Espanola Regional Hospital and Health Centre.
Co-op advisor and teacher, Dean Riggs, accompanied this report to the facility on Thursday, November 5 to talk to present and past students.
Our first stop was to meet with current student, Allison Schouten, who is in a placement in the hospital lab.
She is working with three staffers, all of whom took part in the school’s program before landing jobs in the lab at the hospitalm, in large part due to their past experiences with the program.
Rhonda St. Denis, the first former cooperative student to get a job at the lab shared her story.
“I first entered into the program back in 1999. I was in high school at the time and had two placements, one was the Espanola Nursing Home and the other at Bourcier’s Funeral Home,” St. Denis stated.
She also acted as an advisor to the two other co-op students she now works with when they were in the cooperative program.Tracey Dubreuil and Melody Kutschke both enjoy working there.
Kutschke joined the program and landed the placement at the lab in 2001. Dubreuil in 2002.
“What I found was I was happy with the placement right away, it became a very real career opportunity. I encourage any students who hear about cooperative education to give it a try, keep trying if it seems tough at the current time, you might just find your niche in the world,”said Kutschke.
Another thing that the girls all made perfectly clear was the program helped them with their training in college. All three stated they knew how to do certain tasks ahead of time when they were undergoing training.
Later the other two were hired for summer jobs at the lab, again in large part, due to their positive experiences with the program.
