Putting Their Interests to Work : High School Vocational Academies Add Hands-On Component to Education

Amid the sweet perfume of dried roses, carnations and eucalyptus and the hum of the refrigerator in the corner of the classroom, high school students pierce the stems of magenta and bronze orchids with thin wires, fold back the new metal stem and proceed to fashion their corsages.

Gone are the days when the only vocational courses high schools offered took place with the buzz of an electric saw at wood shop class or the roar of car engines at auto shop.

A number of schools throughout the nation have responded to President Clinton’s initiative proposed three years ago urging campuses to create more courses to ease students’ transition into the workplace. Few have embraced the school-to-work movement with as much enthusiasm as the Oxnard Union High School District.

At Camarillo High School, students interested in the flower industry are busy creating their corsages, setting off the orchids with ribbons and netting. Rio Mesa High School students interested in health-related careers are hunched over their books, soaking in Latin roots and medical terms.

During a mock job interview for the tourism and hotel field, an Oxnard High School teacher reminds students to maintain eye contact, give firm handshakes and respond to questions with “yes” instead of “yup.”

Educators say that these school-to-work programs--called “academies” in Oxnard and Camarillo--give all students, not just the straight-A students, a chance at a successful career.

“The very top students are self-directed,” said Oxnard High teacher Mary Hopple. “The other kids can be successful, but they need to find what direction they want to go. . . . Those are the kids that go through the system and may be really good, and they’re the majority of the population and work force. We need to reach them by trying to do something interesting and relevant. You have to hook them to get them in.”

With that goal in mind, Hopple spearheaded a move to create the 13,398-student district’s first academy three years ago.

While federal funding issues for the program originally touched off a storm at the Ventura County Board of Education, the advent of the hospitality and tourism academy--which Hopple has taught for three years--has spawned the birth of three additional academies in the district, serving a total of about 100 students.

The health services academy at Rio Mesa High School and the criminal justice and law academy at Camarillo High both sprouted in 1995. In the fall, Camarillo started its agribusiness academy, concentrating on floriculture this year but with plans to expand the program to other agricultural fields in the next school year.

District officials also hope to draw students to an engineering and science academy they want to kick off in the fall. Though the program is still in the planning stages, school officials say they are forging a partnership with the Navy Seabees aimed at allowing students to learn about math and science while shadowing engineers at the Port Hueneme Navy base.

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The academies, typically geared toward juniors and seniors, often mix classroom instruction with numerous field trips and internships at local businesses.

The health services and the hospitality and tourism academies are operated by the county’s Regional Occupation Program, a job-training program, and are open to students from any school in Ventura County. The two Camarillo academies, run by the district, are open to students within the district.

But all academy students have to manage the logistics of fitting the course with their schools’ schedules and arranging transportation.

Every weekday, 17-year-old junior Gabriel Cardona makes a transition. The Ventura High student drives to Rio Mesa High just outside Oxnard during his lunch breaks, gulps down his meal and enters the health services academy--all to further his dream of becoming a pediatrician.

“They teach you what’s expected out there,” Gabriel said during a brief break from cramming down Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes with aspiring physical therapists, psychologists, nurses and dental assistants.

With all the new terms he has learned, few of the medical words from television drama series “ER” befuddle Gabriel. During visits to the doctor, “I tell him, ‘Give me the high-tech words,’ ” he said.

During the final months of school, students in the course will be scattered, doing internships at individual dental and doctor’s offices.

The academies usually require students to receive classroom instruction for half a year before spending their second semester at flower shops, hotels or resorts. They receive a full-course credit for working about five hours a week.

What teachers and students come to realize in many cases is that the academies are just as valuable for discovering what you don’t want to do as they are for what you do want to do. For instance, Jim Steele, who teaches the criminal justice class, had a student last year who dreamed of being a police officer. The promising student took the course and went out in the field with officers and decided it just wasn’t what she wanted.

“I was disappointed, but then I started to think this is a good thing,” Steele said. “Here’s a student who wanted to be a cop, had a chance to investigate it thoroughly and said, ‘This might not be my calling.’ This may save her a lot of time and money. . . . I think this is as valid for them as for those students who say they want to take it.”

Visits and work experiences at areas such as local jails, law offices, police academies and courts expose students to a broad range of professions and give them insight into what is expected of them in the field, Steele said.

Mere lessons, lectures and textbook readings can easily be forgotten, students said. “In a couple years you won’t remember, but you’ll remember going to the jail and going to the attorneys,” said 18-year-old senior Mandy Byrne.

Mandy has received a scholarship to Drake University and plans to study political science, with the goal of becoming a prosecutor.

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The idea of starting the academies with federal money created a brouhaha at the Ventura County Board of Education three years ago. The conservative board majority--Angela Miller, Marty Bates and then-Trustee Wendy Larner--opposed a request to apply for a $500,000 federal grant for job training.

Larner and Miller voted against the application request, saying the program had too many federal mandates. Bates opposed the request, concerned that too much of the grant money would go toward creating a bureaucracy to manage the program.

The board’s vote created a power struggle with county schools Supt. Charles Weis, who, after citing laws asserting his authority, overturned the board and sent in the application.

In the end, the district did not receive any of the $15 million in federal money available under the School-to-Work Opportunity Act.

The programs are now operated with school district and regional job-training money, while a $7,500 Carl Perkins federal loan was used to kick off each academy.

Detractors of the school-to-work idea have called it a watering down of the academic curriculum and an unproven experiment, but students who participate in the classroom and work experience are often its strongest advocates.

“At first I was like, ‘I don’t know, man,’ but after awhile, I liked it. I liked it,” said James Perez, 18, an Oxnard High junior who is part of the hospitality and tourism academy. “It keeps my head focused and I learn a lot of things about the field and learn how to approach people.”

The academies depend heavily on local businesses to provide expertise and work experiences for students.

Bruce Ritchey began teaching a floriculture class at Camarillo High School 18 years ago. When the school and district considered turning the course into an academy, requiring a work component, one of the business people Ritchey called was Melissa Drummond.

Drummond, 34, who took Ritchey’s floriculture class when it first started, was a manager at a flower shop last year. In January, she opened her own flower shop in Camarillo and then took in two academy students as interns.

While students in class design floral bouquets, headdresses, wall hangings and corsages, the student interns often put their knowledge to use doing the not-so-glamorous grunt work that is involved.

“There may be some who say, ‘This is what I want to do’ when they’re in class,” said Drummond, wearing a blue apron and preparing to ship flower vases out to restaurants in Glendale. “When they get to work, they say, ‘This is not what I want to do.’ When you’re in a flower shop, there’s cleaning the buckets constantly or the flowers are going to rot, or cleaning the floor because the bacteria can kill other flowers.”

At Drummond’s shop, Floral Expressions, 18-year-old interns Trisha White and Andrea Manzer strip away the leaves of golden chrysanthemums and insert the flower and leather ferns into a vase, then load the arrangement onto a gray tray.

For Andrea, her academy experience has shown her that working at a flower shop is something she would enjoy doing as a part-time job to earn money while going to college. But her goal, at least for now, she says, is to become either a parole officer or an FBI agent.

But James Perez says his internship at a 273-room resort at Channel Islands Harbor has sparked his interest in the field.

In the business catering office of the Casa Sirena Marina Resort, James puts together a package for visitors, inserting menus and information on local attractions into a hotel folder. After eight weeks at the Tower Club in Oxnard working with chefs, he, like all students, rotates to different resorts and hotels.

“In a way, I would like to be a [hotel general manager] or to run my own kind of business,” said James, who still has a year to ruminate about life outside of high school. “Sometimes I do, but sometimes I don’t, but in the long run I think I will.”