Students at North Little Rock High School are getting industry-level certified in manufacturing basics in a pilot program unlike any other in the state. The school also currently certifies students as Certified Nursing Assistants and Pharmacy Technicians.
Photography by Erica Swallow
Top Photo: High school senior Lamarcus Fresh learns about hydraulic systems that are used in everything from cars and airplanes to construction machinery and barbershop chairs.
This post originally appeared as a two-part series on Arkansas Money & Politics, where Erica writes about innovative career and technical education programming around the state.
It isn’t often that industry is involved in the development of K-12 curriculum, but that’s exactly what happened in the case of the new advanced manufacturing pilot program at North Little Rock High School (NLRHS).
Students can now get hands-on training that prepares them for careers or post-secondary education, while also receiving industry certifications that make the transition smoother. The program is the first and only manufacturing curriculum pilot in the state and also touts a unique approach to industry engagement and future plans for offering concurrent college credits.
“The biggest thing for me is that we help kids find their passion,” says North Little Rock School District (NLRSD) Deputy Superintendent Beth Stewart. “If we can help a student find their passion, we’re going to keep them. They will stay in school, and they’ll stay in the job they’re trained to do. If I know a kid wants to be an electrician, and I can teach him everything through electricity, he’s suddenly interested in what I’ve got to say.”
Engaging students starts with engaging industry, Ms. Stewart says. That’s why the school created an “Advanced Manufacturing Industry Review Board” to provide feedback on every aspect of the program and invited industry leaders to sit on it. Dassault Falcon Jet, electronics producer Molex and steel fabricator Lexicon all have a hand in the livelihood of NLRSD’s manufacturing program. John Miller, senior manager at Dassault Falcon Jet, is one of those. His work centers around training and education at the aerospace multinational.
“The idea here is to deliver graduates who are industry ready at some level,” Mr. Miller says. “It’s a fresh approach to the high school environment. As a board, we provide input. We reviewed the curriculum. We reviewed the resumés of the instructors. I feel very much engaged in that effort.”
Christie Toland, NLRSD director of College and Career Readiness, says the board was also asked to recommend course equipment and machinery options, as well as to review the district’s charter conversion application that will give greater flexibility to expand its career-oriented courses. They, too, helped draft the core competencies necessary for entry-level manufacturing positions, which informs the curriculum.
All of that industry engagement was made possible in large part by the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. Kristi Barr, director of Business Retention and Expansion at the Chamber, collaborated with NLRSD to engage relevant manufacturing leaders. “For the Chamber, this started a few years ago,” Ms. Barr says. “We had an advanced manufacturing executive round table that met quarterly, and we started hearing repeatedly from them about the challenges they were having finding middle- to high-skilled labor sets. Their frustration finding qualified labor prompted us to get a small group of industry together to tackle, ‘If they could create a curriculum, what would it look like?'”
Preparing students for careers they want
NLRHS manufacturing instructor Jacob West demonstrates three-point contact ladder safety.” width=”700″ height=”525″ /> Jacob West teachers ladder safety in manufacturing course at NLRHS” width=”730″ height=”548″ /> NLRHS manufacturing instructor Jacob West demonstrates three-point contact ladder safety.
It isn’t just industry that’s excited about the new manufacturing pilot in North Little Rock. Students are enthusiastic about the prospects, too. In fact, administrators originally planned for 50 students and one instructor, but attracted 195 and had to hire a second teacher.
Lamarcus Fresh, a senior at NLRHS, is enrolled in one of the school’s two pilot manufacturing courses, Introductory Craft Skills, which exposes students to a variety of construction-related and manufacturing career opportunities while helping them build work readiness skills and obtain entry-level industry certifications.
“My whole life revolves around building – cars, houses, anything,” Mr. Fresh says. As a kid, he worked on his own motorbike and helped family members with construction and auto-body work. “When I graduate, I want to go to school to get certified in auto mechanical engineering,” he says. “I work on cars now at Rock Collision [auto body shop] and want to open my own shop one day.”
“It’ll help me with what I’m going to school for, and it’ll help me get paid more from the start.” Skill certifications, in fact, are often tied to pay raises. For Mr. Fresh, it’s about connecting his interests to a career.
This year, Mr.Fresh and his classmates will have the opportunity to obtain two industry-level certifications: OSHA 10 and NCCER Core Curriculum.
These safety and core skills certifications will enable students to continue education in more specific craft areas. The goal for NLRSD is to start students in these introductory classes as early as the eighth grade. “It’s a value-added high school diploma,” Ms. Stewart says.
Jacob West is one of the two high school manufacturing instructors at NLRHS. He has a background in contract construction and transportation work and previously taught engineering at the school. He envisions this program as an attractive offer for students who have dropped out to come back to school to earn a degree. “In four years, we can take a student and send them out of here with not only their NLRHS diploma, but also with a career,” he says. “To use CNC operating as an example, they can actually be a nationally certified CNC operator.”
Certification early in an education not only saves students time and money, but sets them up for higher education options after high school. Of course, the future of NLRHS’s certification programs depends on the rollout of the more advanced curriculum administrators have in mind, a process that Ms. Stewart and Ms. Toland have planned to the T.
A Plan for Expansion and Collaboration
NLRSD is paving the way for secondary manufacturing education in Arkansas.
Inside NLRHS’s new state-of-the-art facilities, North Little Rock School District (NLRSD) Deputy Superintendent Beth Stewart and Christie Toland, NLRSD director of College and Career Readiness describe the vision for career development in the school district. They’re focused on five program paths, all of which are in operation at some level today:
- Engineering;
- Healthcare;
- Computer Science;
- Advanced Manufacturing;
- Transportation, Distribution and Logistics.
With its current offerings, NLRHS already certifies students in its Healthcare program in two popular entry-level positions: Certified Nursing Assistants and Pharmacy Technicians. This new Advanced Manufacturing pilot – along with the Transportation, Distribution and Logistics pilot, it is running concurrently – are part of a larger initiative.
“All of those programs will come together to form the North Little Rock Center of Excellence,” says Ms. Toland, speaking of the school district’s charter application. “In addition to the career and technical education piece, we will also offer the opportunity for students to choose a traditional core curriculum, blended, or digital instruction – whatever meets their needs to achieve a high school diploma.” The district has its hearing with the Arkansas Department of Education in mid-October. If it is approved, the Center of Excellence will be a career-oriented school of its own within NLRHS.
“The things we want for the manufacturing program, and the other programs, we can’t do in a traditional setting,” Ms. Stewart explains. “It is truly a personalized learning approach, so that students can learn at the pace they need to.”
In the coming year, NLRSD hopes to partner with local community colleges, starting with Pulaski Technical College, to offer concurrent credit, so that NLRHS students can earn college credit while still in high school.
Even without the benefits of certifications and college credits, though, these programs can add a lot of value for students in their everyday lives. Blaine Miller is another senior in the Introductory Craft Skills class, and even though he plans to attend college to be a youth minister, he enrolled to learn how to use tools and build small objects, like birdhouses, he told AMP. “This class can really help for when I’m older, have my own house, and something messes up – I’m not going to have to call anybody, because I’ll already know how to fix it.”
The team behind NLRSD’s career path programing has been collaborating with Little Rock School District and Pulaski County Special School District, the other two public school districts in the area, to see the Advanced Manufacturing offerings come to life in other classrooms across the region. With any luck, students across the state will soon have the same opportunity to explore manufacturing and construction career options in between English and math classes.
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