Learning About Jobs by Seeing and Doing

On Dec. 3, six Cleveland High School seniors temporarily left their classrooms and entered the “real world” for the first time, enrolling in a new program at the Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power facility in Canoga Park.

On Wednesday, the six seniors from the Reseda school became the first graduating class of “Job Shadowing,” a program designed to give students a hands-on introduction to advanced machine work for projects such as making rocket propulsion systems.

“It represents the first time where industry and education has bonded,” said John Moore, metal-shop teacher at Cleveland, who attended a ceremony at Rocketdyne’s manufacturing plant to honor the new graduates.

Lisa Hallet, Job Shadowing administrator, and Dan Welter, director of manufacturing, presented certificates to Cleveland seniors Danny Lopez, Lena Pira, Manny Rubio, Chinchilla Edvin, Martiros Tngryan and Issac Sibrian.

“[Job Shadowing] gave us a view of what it’s like in the technical world,” said Lopez, 17. “It’s not like this in our school because our shops are real antiquated.”

Every Wednesday from 8 to 10 a.m., for six weeks, the students worked in teams of two and observed, or “shadowed,” machinists working in the plant.

The students were introduced to many aspects of working at Rocketdyne, such as electronics, tooling, basic blueprint reading, material removal and 3-D simulation.

“We’re confident that if they should come [to work for Rocketdyne] at some point, they’re already going to have a lot of the skills and the basic framework that we’re looking for,” Welter said.

For the spring semester, which began Wednesday, the program was extended to 20 weeks, Welter said.

Cleveland junior Lance Mabaily, 16, one of 20 students enrolled in the expanded program, was not disappointed by the first day of class, which took place before the ceremony. “It’s an exciting opportunity to get into this industry and learn about the real world through hands-on training,” he said.