At a time of the year when most children are swimming, biking or heading to adventure camp, many others are being introduced to potential skilled trade careers through a different kind of camp.
Organized in partnership with industry partners and community colleges throughout the province, the Skills Ontario’s Trades and Tech Summer Camps are one-week-long day camps geared to children entering Grades 7 to 9.
During those one-week sessions the “campers” participate in hands-on industrial, construction, motive power, service and technology sector workshops. Some of those workshops include auto repair, welding, carpentry and culinary.
As part of the program, they also explore careers in skilled trades through interactive games, entrepreneurship programs and industry tours.
An example of the latter was a visit to the Toyota Cambridge plant in late July for participants of the Conestoga College camp, says Skills Ontario CEO Ian Howcroft.
“Our camps provide a fantastic opportunity to add an educational twist to summer vacations. We try to make them fun,” says Howcroft, emphasizing that, through the hands-on activities related to skilled trades, the campers develop communication, problem-solving and teamwork skills.
Although Skills Ontario “doesn’t like to turn anyone away,” the camps have to be restricted to about 15 to 18 participants for logistical and organizational reasons.
The registration fee is $250 plus tax for each camper. But some school boards cover the fees for their students, says Howcroft.
A major feature is a trade and tech truck with an array of equipment which reinforces what the students learn in the college workshops. Some examples include a 3D printer and heavy crane simulator. As there is only one truck, it rotates between the colleges.
However, Skills Ontario will be acquiring three more this year under a provincial funding program, Howcroft says.
Launched about 20 years ago, the summer camp program was greatly expanded throughout the province in 2011.
Now, it consists of approximately 28 camps in a geographic arc stretching northwest to Thunder Bay, east to Ottawa and southwest to Windsor.
In areas where camps serve First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities, “we do our best to ensure that our programs are led by and inclusive of Indigenous peoples.”
A Skills Ontario employee manages the overall program and each camp is administered by onsite personnel who function in an assisting role.
But the courses are taught by college or industry instructors who are specialists in their fields, says Howcroft, emphasizing the critical role the colleges perform in providing those instructors, the venues and the equipment the students use.
Sheridan College’s Brampton campus actually hosts three separate one-week camps at its Magna School for the Skilled Trades.
Each week begins with icebreaker, introductions and safety talks. By Monday afternoon the students are working in a carpentry workshop. That’s followed by plumbing, milling machinery and welding workshops, says Skills Ontario program facilitator Chris Cole.
Following the lead of training institutions, the students’ introduction to welding is through a virtual platform on the Wednesday afternoon. That sets the stage for a full day endeavour on Thursday where, first they weld trial pieces and then advance to cutting, soldering and transforming copper piping into cloak racks, he says.
As with a number of their other creations, the campers get to keep the coat racks, says Cole.
With the exception of the welding all the other subjects are “hands-on, right from the start.”
On Friday mornings the students complete their plumbing projects and then the week wraps up with an invitation-showcase event for the benefit of parents who see what their children have created, says Cole.
Interspersed throughout the week are a number of interconnected games Skills Ontario staff organize.
One involves insulating an egg with dollar-store material and then dropping it from a staircase. If the egg cracks or breaks, then the insulation isn’t sure enough and the test fails. Another game is constructing a freestanding tower comprised of newspapers, he says.
“The games are intended to test the students’ creativity and problem-solving abilities,” says Suzane Peynadeo, a program facilitator with the Dufferin Peel Catholic School Board. It is one of a number of school boards that support the program.
At one of the Sheridan camps, Peynadeo had an opportunity to underscore the value of the program in a discussion with Josephine, one of two female participants.
The 14-year-old said she was attending the camp because her mother suggested it, but probably wouldn’t enter a skilled trade.
Instead, she is considering architecture, to which Peynadeo responded: “But architects work with skilled trades.”
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