FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) has been very successful this year with fundraising, events and meetings. At the FBLA State Conference we won over 50 awards and even won the chapter of the year award! We want to finish this year off strong by attending the FBLA national conference in Anaheim, California.

Four people who did well at states will be attending nationals but it is quite expensive. To pay for the trip FBLA is hosting a spaghetti dinner to mitigate the costs. The dinner will take place on Thursday, May 30. You can show up to be seated at either 6pm or 7pm. It is at the ELKS Lodge in Brattleboro. The cost is $10 but it is worth every penny since it is going to a good cause and the food will be awesome.

It is important that we go to Nationals because events like this are the experience of a lifetime. At the conference we meet amazing new people who have similar interests as us from all over the country. We also keep developing our professional and business that are so important for our job and for the future.

We arrived in Burlington on Wednesday evening. We went to the mall and got to hang out and get dinner together. When we went back to the hotel we snuggled together in one room and listened to people practice their speeches and presentations for the next day’s competitive events.

On Thursday, we woke up early and got dressed in some very snazzy business attire. We went to a bunch of cool workshops that taught us about things like financial management. All the kids had an interactive, competitive events like Job Interviewing, Public Speaking, Help Desk, Marketing and Business Plans. That evening, during dinner, we won our first award by coming up with the best chapter cheer and earning the Most Spirited Chapter award — a megaphone we add our name to for the second time!

That night, staff from Northern Lights led us in games and team building exercises. We all had a great time getting to know kids from other chapters while participating in team building activities.

Our chapter with all of our awards.

On Friday, we started out with an extravagant breakfast. Then most of the kids in our chapter went on the March of Dimes walk-a-thon, while other students had callbacks from events the day before. After the walk and the last round of competitions, we got packed up and headed to the luncheon awards banquet. The food was amazing and overall the WRCC FBLA won or placed more than 45 times in a variety of events!

The grandest prize of all came at the very end… “And the award for Chapter of the Year goes to… WRCC!”  We all ran up and grabbed the huge 3 1/2 foot trophy that we will proudly display in the Career Center office. Ms. Cornell got the Advisor of the Year award, too. Our FBLA chapter is the best in the state… something that hasn’t happened to Brattleboro since 1999.

This will definitely be a trip to remember. We’re excited for the National Conference that will be held in Los Angeles, California. For those of us who aren’t going to CA, we can’t wait until next year’s State Conference.

All 17 members from the WRCC FBLA Chapter.

Biak Chin and Brenda Atwater participating in a team building activity.

This demonstration was part of the Big Brother Big Sisters program, which provided the elementary students a chance to see the kind of projects local high school students are doing. It also gave the students a chance to play with the robots and learn how to control them during a game of robot freeze tag.

Kyle Champney’s, is a senior at the Career Center. His team 7033 has been competing with other schools around Vermont and New England with the goal of going on to contend in the National competition for high school students. Kyle gave a demonstration with his robot, the Brattlebot.

Here are some more awesome pictures from the day!

Students play a game of “freeze tag” with the robots.

Look at those wheels on Kyle Champney’s Brattlebot.

Since the beginning of the year, we ran various sales campaigns to help pay for States. We sold Yankee Candles and Joe Corbi frozen foods. Most recently, we ran a raffle with gift certificates and items that local businesses donated.

On Saturday, (yes, Saturday) March 9, we were sequestered for their first series of tests on Word Processing, Desktop Publishing and prepared documents (resumés, etc.) for the Job Interview event that will take place at States. In the Word Processing test, students had to create documents in a specific format. We will be evaluated by judges on how well we create these documents.

Then, on Wednesday, March 13, we took more tests in various subjects of business such as Sports Management, Accounting, Economics, Computer Concepts, Global Business, Marketing, Cyber Security, Computer Software, Business Math, Business Procedures and more; a total of over 100 tests!

Matt Anderson works on his Impromptu speech.

Certain tests — Job Interviewing, Public Speaking and Impromptu Speaking — are events that will take place in front of the judges at the FBLA State Leadership Conference. Students have prepared materials at home and practiced with the help of other students so they can perform to the best of their ability at this year’s conference. Some members are even making promotional FBLA posters and a banner to promote the March of Dimes campaign that FBLA is affliated with.

Rissa Smith working on a poster for the State Conference.

Last year, WRCC-FBLA returned with 71 awards in all different categories. Just about every single person won at least one award and many people won two or more. This year, we hope to set a new record. We can’t wait to attend the FBLA State Leadership Conference, see old friends and make new ones from around Vermont. Check back in the beginning of April to hear about how well we did!

Every year FBLA holds a blood drive in conjunction with the American Red Cross. By donating just one pint of blood, you could be saving the lives of 4 people. Last year, we had 45 staff and students participate and collected a total of 45 pints (or 720 cubic ounces) of blood. This year, our goal is to fill 60  pints during the blood drive. If you’re 16 years old, you can donate with parental permission. If you’re older than 16, you don’t need permission to donate blood. Join us in helping save lives by donating blood.

HOW:
You can sign up to donate any time this week in the cafeteria during your lunch period. For more information, you can visit the sign-up table. The blood drive will take place on March 19th from 10:00 a.m. to 2:40 p.m. in the BUHS multipurpose room.

WHY:
By donating blood, you could be saving somebody’s life. Not only is that a great feeling and something you can feel proud of. Plus, in years to come, it’s a pretty awesome story to tell your kids.

Theresa Glabach and Brenda Atwater from FBLA help to sign kids up to donate.

Here’s the story, from one very grateful neighbor…

In late January 2013 I received a notice from my home insurance company informing me I needed to install a handrail on the cement steps leading up to my back yard. The idea really made sense and I was very willing to comply…but, they gave me just 20 days to get the job done. Late January in Vermont equals snow and I just didn’t know how I could accomplish this.

As I live quite close to the Windham Regional Career Center and two of my daughters graduated from WRCC as well, I knew that they offered a program in Construction Trades so I decided to contact the instructor, Bob Simeon, to ask for advice on how to get this mandatory handrail built and installed in 20 days.

After a bit of discussion and a brief viewing of the project site, Mr. Simeon brought three of his students to my home on February 13. They arrived armed with snow shovels, drills, saws, screws, bolts, wood and the enthusiasm to learn while they worked. Two and a half hours later I had a great, sturdy handrail that met the insurance requirements.

I am so pleased with the work they did. Thank you WRCC and the young men in the construction program.

Sincerely,
Karen DeSerres

Mr. Bob Simeon inspects the completed handrail.

Warner grew up in Brattleboro and studied accounting and business at WRCC where he was also a member of the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). After graduating in 1983 he worked in various business roles within the healthcare industry for the next 15 years and continued to rise to higher positions, in bigger companies and with more responsibility. Today he serves as the first non-physician CEO for the Ochsner Clinic, a company valued at over 1.9 billion dollars and the largest private employer in Louisiana. This is his story….

Give us a brief overview of your life up until this point. What happened after graduation?
Okay, so after I graduated from high school I went to undergraduate school at Southern New Hampshire University where I double majored in accounting and computer information systems. Once I graduated from there in 1987 I went to work for a company called Ernst And Young doing public accounting and healthcare consulting. I stayed there through 1990 and then went to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center, in Nashua, NH and spent about ten years there in a variety of different roles.

I was chief financial officer, then I was in a business development role and helped grow the physician group at Southern Hampshire Medical Center from one physician to one hundred physicians over an eight year period. After that, I decided to work at a bigger organization and in 1998 went to New Orleans to be the chief operating officer of the Ochsner Clinic. Ochsner at that time was about $800 million dollar company so I was the number two person there and over the past 14 years, we’ve grown from $800 million to now over 1.9 billion dollar company or the largest private employer in Louisiana. Four months ago I was appointed to be their first non-physician CEO of the Ochsner Clinic.

Describe a day in the life of a CEO?
Working in healthcare these days is challenging. I’m glad that I have a finance background and that has been very helpful in my role, but certainly being a CEO is a demanding job. It’s really a 24 x 7 x 365; you really don’t get time a lot of time off. You’re always in the public eye as the leader.

There are certain benefits that come from being a leader and being a CEO of a large organization, but there is tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with it. We employ 14,000 people and we care for over 350,000 people a year, so we have a lot of responsibility to do things right and make sure that we’re doing a great job.

Let’s go back in time… How did you end up taking classes at WRCC?
I knew what career I wanted, I knew I wanted to be in this business side of a career and I really felt the Career Center helped me understand that helped me develop and grow and really helped me build that base of skills and confidence that really went with me in the college and into my career.

How did the Career Center help you develop more self confidence?
My teachers really helped me realize my full potential. I didn’t know what my potential was. And I don’t think I would have gotten that had I not been in the Career Center. I was a member of the FBLA, that was critical to building my confidence and understanding the importance of public speaking, doing things in the community and understanding how other businesses operate, develop and grow.

I ran for a state office in FBLA and had to raise my own funds and that really help me realize I had to take initiative, but you have to have confidence to know you can do that. I truly believe if I hadn’t had that experience with the Career Center with my accounting classes, with my instructors and with FBLA I would not be where I am today.

Did you feel like you had freedom to choose your own path at WRCC?
Obviously when you’re in school you have choices where you go and what classes you take, but I really felt like the Career Center helped me become more well rounded and frankly, helped me understand what I was good at and what interested me. At the end of the day if you don’t work on things you are interested they just become more of a chore versus really something that you would like to do.

How did your classes prepare you for the real world?
I think the Career Center helps you understand what happens in a real business. It helps you understand that there is more than what just happens in the classroom and the classroom experience is important, but going out and seeing things seeing how it works is really critically important. I’m doing it in my job today. We had opportunities to look at businesses and how they do things and that’s really how you learn. You learn by observing, you learn by going out and taking initiative to find out what is going on around you versus sitting in a chair and thinking it is all going to come to you.

What would you tell a student who’s on the fence about going to the Career Center?
It’s a great opportunity — one where you have to take initiative to reach your goals. The question is are you going to do it? Are you going to take the first step and persevere and move through it knowing that things are not easy?

High school is not easy, the Career Center is not easy, college isn’t easy, life isn’t easy and you are going to hit adversity, but you can do it. You always learn from it and that makes you a better person.

Did you ever dream that some day you’d be CEO of huge hospital?
I never dreamed I would be doing what I am doing today, it just happened. I worked hard and because of that I feel very proud of the work that I’ve done. I’ve always had great support, at the Career Center and from my family, but even with that you’ve got to do it yourself. You’ve got to stand up, work hard, take responsibility and do a good job and if you do those things, you’re going to be successful.

Brian is the Vice President & Secretary of A.L. Tyler and Sons, a Brattleboro-based mechanical and electrical contracting company started by his grandfather in 1946. A BUHS alum (class of ‘82), Brian serves on the advisory board for the electricity/electronics programs at the Career Center. One of A.L. Tylers’ current crew members, Logan George, is a recent Career Center graduate who trained on the job with Brian and is now pursuing his Journeyman’s license with the help of the company. This unique arrangement has allowed a student to succeed in his desired career and a local business to gain a valuable employee in the process. This is their story…

What does the advisory board do?
It’s made up of local business members. We have two or three meetings a year and it’s a chance for the teachers to run their curriculum by employers in the area and we can give them insight about what should be included for real world applications in the field. It helps to make sure they they’re staying current on what’s happening with the field and that keeps the programs stay up to date.

What does A.L. Tyler look for in a new employee?
We count on the Career Center to give them the basic knowledge of what the field is all about and we take them from there and craft them to do the work on the level that we expect. We pride ourselves on the quality of work that we do, especially being a family business.

How long is the training for a new electrician?
For the guys that we bring on board through the apprenticeship program it’s a four-year process. It’s a night school, so they’re working 40 hours a week and going to school at night in Keene — the closest apprenticeship classes to Brattleboro.

They do their four years of schooling, plus four years in the field, which is 8,000 hours and when they complete that they can take their Journeyman’s test and become a licensed electrician. From there, they can put in an extra 2,000 hours and that allows them to take their master’s test and they become a master electrician.

How did Logan join the team?
Logan was a senior doing his required courses at the Career Center and joining us after lunch, getting 3-4 hours of training a day, working around his classes at the Career Center.

All of those hours he worked while he was in school can be applied towards his apprenticeship program and that gives him a leg up. Now he works with us full-time and goes to class two nights a week for the apprenticeship program.

How did that work for you as an employer?
It worked find for the workload we had at the time and we had projects right in Brattleboro that were close enough he could go there for just a few hours. It started as a little bit of shadowing and training so he knew the tools and general workplace safety and then he fit right in after a little while.

What role did the Career Center play in the process?
They would check in and make sure that he was getting his coursework done, there was some paperwork for insurance they would check on and as part of the apprenticeship program, he has to keep a logbook of his hours. It’s broken down into different categories of tools, materials and what kind of work he’s doing that he has to keep track of.

Would you go through that process again for hiring someone new?
Yeah. We’ve done it with a couple of kids in the past and it gives the kids a good idea whether it’s a career path they want to continue down. It makes us feel good because we’re helping the Career Center out, helping the community out and helping the kids out. We’re just trying to find a good career path for these guys.

What’s the benefit, as an employer, of being a hands-on part of the student/employee’s learning?
Well, they get proper classroom study, because we’re working with the advisory board telling them what we need to see out of the kids. They work on a real job site with the Building Trades class where they wire the house based off of our design, then we go back and look at their work to make sure they’re doing what they should be. It gives the kids an idea of what we’re looking for when they land in the job and that gives them a little head start knowing “if these guys want X, then I know how to do it”. It also means less time we have to spend breaking new employees of bad habits they learned somewhere else.

What might other local businesses gain from collaborating with WRCC the A.L. Tyler has?
Firstly, they’d learn what kind of students the Career Center can produce. We’ve got a lot of good programs and they produce a lot of good kids. Second, they’d benefit from finding those kids locally and keeping them in the area rather than the kids feeling like they have to take those skills elsewhere.

How do you think this approach benefits the kids compared to a traditional high school?
They’ve got a lot of the basic knowledge and skills already built in by the time they’re graduating. It’s more hands-on, so they know what the different tools and materials are on the first day… They’re not totally green thanks to that hands-on experience.

How is A.L. Tyler helping Logan achieve his long-term career goals?
In order for their field hours to count, they have to be sponsored by a licensed contractor and as long as the student is passing the classes and doing what they’re supposed to be, we pay for the apprenticeship program for them.

Where do you see Logan in ten years?
He’s definitely on track to finish his apprenticeship program to pass his apprenticeship test and get his journeyman’s license. If he sticks with it, he can move up through being a licensed electrician, to being a job foreman to progress into project management. I would hope to see him as one of our superintendents or foremans out there running a job site and hopefully teaching the kid that he was ten years ago to do the same thing.

Bailey moved to Vermont from Indianapolis when he was just three years old. After moving between several towns throughout elementary school and middle school, he ended up at Leland and Gray Union High School. During his senior year, Bailey decided he was looking for something more technical. He is now a senior at the Windham Regional Career Center and getting a jump on his college education. This is his story…

What interested you in changing schools so late in your education?
I was never planning to come to the Career Center until my junior year when I came here for an open house. They were displaying a ton of things students had been doing in all of the programs and opportunities at the Career Center. I met with Ms. Anthony, the robotics and computer integrated machining teacher, and she showed me some of the competitions the robotics students were working on and I thought that was really cool and exactly what I wanted to do in college. Being able to do it in high school is really awesome.

What kind of classes have you taken so far?
This is my first semester here and right now I am taking Introduction to Engineering Design and Robotics, as well as two classes at BUHS to finish off my high school degree.

Describe the Career Center classes you’re taking?
Introduction to Engineering Design is mostly aimed at computer imaging of 3D models, which is a lot of fun. Robotics is at the Trade and Industrial Center. It’s a really small class where you’re able to be very hands on with robotic kits and our teacher, Ms. Anthony, knows a lot about robotics, so there’s a lot of wisdom she can pass on to us.

What are STEM courses?
Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) is the basis of computers, cars, buildings, infrastructure… things for communication, travel and housing and anything to do with science, technology, engineering and math directly is in the STEM program. Everything from calculus classes to computer classes and way more. Your basically geeky stuff…

How is learning at the Career Center different than a traditional high school?
Traditional high school classes are often a lot more structured and a lot less hands on than things at the Career Center. At the Career Center every class that I can see or walk in on, students aren’t just learning theory, they’re learning how to actually go out and do these things.

Do you feel like the Career Center offers more freedom?
The Career Center is all about freedom in choosing what you want to do with your time. If you don’t want to go to the cafeteria for lunch you can stay in any classroom and work with the teacher, if you want to come after school and work on the robotics competition that is totally allowed. If you want to do some extra credit work that’s fine too. It’s all about how you want to use your time. It’s all up to you.

How is it helping you prepare your for college?
Right now, I’m trying to stack up on all of the college courses I can that are offered by the Career Center, just so I can get most of my freshman year in college out of the way. Most of the freshman year courses I’m interested in at college are offered here.

How are these different from Advanced Placement courses?
AP courses are not considered college courses. The college level courses you take here will get recognized as college credit.

How else has the Career Center prepared you to enter the workforce?
At the Trade and Industrial Center at least once a day, teachers will share things that will happen in your work life as an engineer, technician or whatever course you may be taking at that time. They bring in people who are currently working in the field or worked in the field to tell you about what it’s like and what you need to do to be prepared for that career.

What advice would you offer to someone who’s on the fence about taking classes here?
If you are interested in business, culinary, engineering, auto mechanics, forestry, horticulture just about anything you can think of… if you’re interested in doing anything as a career sooner, go to the Career Center. A lot of students often think the career center is for red necks or the kids who aren’t going anywhere, when often students from the Career Center get jobs faster and more securely.

Chris grew up in Brattleboro where his family owns and operates Burrows Specialized Sports on Main Street. He attended local elementary school and ended up at the Career Center when he was enrolled at Brattleboro Union High School. Chris graduated from WRCC in 2009 and is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology degree at SUNY Canton in Upstate New York. This is his story….

What first got you interested in mechanical engineering?
Ever since I was little, I would spend time hanging around my family’s sport shop watching the technicians work on the skis and bikes and that always really appealed to me, so I think that’s what got me into the mechanical engineering field.

What made you consider taking classes at the Career Center?
When I was a sophomore at BUHS, I heard that they were offering machining courses and some of the other courses at the Career Center and it sounded pretty awesome. My advisor recommended that I check it out, so I took the pre-tech machining course and absolutely loved it.

Can you remember the moment you decided “this is for me”?
Yeah, it was in my pre-tech machining course. I was working on an old Bridgeport mill and I just took to it immediately. Other students were looking at me like, “how is he doing this?” — it just clicked and I often helped other students who needed assistance. I knew it was for me at that point.

What subject did you struggle with in school?
Math has always been my biggest struggle, which is obviously pretty important for engineering. In high school I never took any pre-Calc or advanced level math, just the minimum requirement, but I was able to do fine once I was at the Career Center.

Why was that?
For me it’s more about the teaching style. When it’s applied to engineering or physics calculations or anything like that, it becomes very easy. It’s the conceptual math — when it’s just numbers on a page — I have a difficult time understanding. If I can see it working in my head, and apply it to something that interests me, I get it  much more easily.

What did you like best about the Career Center?
What I really liked about the Career Center was that you could really choose what you want to do. There are a lot of programs, there’s something for everybody and once you get into it you’re stuck with a teacher who really cares and really knows a lot about that field. If you get into a program you really love and want to run with it they will absolutely help you do that. They are always there to keep pushing you harder.

How did the teaching style differ from what you were used to?
My engineering teachers really made the courses fun and brought a lot of their personal experience into the class, which helped to make the career field sound interesting. And that’s something that occurs with a lot of Career Center courses.

I think a lot of students like it because they feel like the teacher is not just some professor  up there saying “do this, do that”, they’re actually there almost like a team mate ready to work with you and help guide you without simply just telling you what to do. They leave things open and let you make your own mistakes so you can learn from them. It’s really not your traditional type of classroom.

How did the Career Center’s approach prepare you for a career in mechanical engineering?
On the machining side, it gave me a real sense of comfort with the machines from having spent so much time working on them. I feel like I have really good understanding of how they tend to behave, even on a new machine I’ve never worked on before. The Career Center gave me that kind of technical aptitude for it. Also, you get your mistakes out early in a classroom setting so you know what not to do when you get out in the field. It’s like free job training.

What advice would you share with a student considering WRCC?
You’ve got plenty of time in high school and there really is something for everybody. If you have any idea about what you might want to do, it’s worth taking the course and trying it out to see if you really like it before you commit the time and money to it, only to find out it’s not right for you. So I would say absolutely give it a shot.