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Learning to earn Leilehua High School students are getting down to business, and word is getting out.
2 academies at Leilehua nurture
student-run businesses that bring
the real world into their classesBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.comAla Serenity, the students' food-service business, catered a Hawaiian luncheon for IBM Corp.'s Christmas party. Another student-run business, Tech Threads, embroiders cotton bathrobes and chef jackets for Halekulani, and has also done work for Campbell Estate, Heald College and Marsha Nadalin Salon & Spa. Still another business, Cinema Tech, videotapes weddings and birthdays for $50 an hour.
There are five businesses run by students at Leilehua. Besides catering, embroidery and video services, Serenity Sweets offers baked goods, and Tech Images does everything from printing business cards to personalizing mouse pads and coffee mugs.
"Teaching nowadays is so different -- not like before, just a textbook and paper. It's like the real work thing," said Tammy Nakamura, who teaches the culinary academy.
Giving students a taste of real-life work experience is what the program at Leilehua High School is all about.
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"It's not just books, it's hands-on here. You can't learn everything from books," said Jan-Michael Brinson, the Cinema Tech production manager who wants to go to college and one day return to teach the class.The businesses are part of Leilehua High School's two academies, the Communication Technology Academy and the Culinary Arts Academy. This year, 265 students are enrolled in the academies, in which they are treated as employees, wearing uniforms to school and punching in on a time clock.
"I have five managers that oversee the operation of the whole academy," Nakamura said. "They handle the finances; they take orders; the production manager makes sure everything goes out as it's supposed to. I just actually oversee them and do the instruction area. The students are the ones actually running the business."
Cynthia Elia, Leilehua's career and technical education coordinator, said the academies are so popular they have waiting lists, and some students take summer school to free up electives to enroll. Most of the students are juniors and seniors because two electives are required to take the lecture and lab. They earn letter grades just as in other classes.
The program trains students using national industry standards and gives students marketable skills, she said.
"Learning for our students goes far beyond four walls of the classroom and expands them into a global society," Elia said. "We're sure this system gives our students a cutting edge."
On a tour of the Wahiawa school two weeks ago, representatives of Castle & Cooke expressed interest in working with the students.
Susan Harada, Castle & Cooke's Commercial Properties operations manager, said Dole Plantation in Wahiawa is planning to lay the tracks for a 2.2-mile train ride and add a 3-acre botanical garden. She said Castle & Cooke would be interested in working with Cinema Tech -- the students' TV and multimedia business -- to film the step-by-step processes as a company keepsake or perhaps to show in a possible future minimuseum.
"We really see some things we can work together with the school on, especially in this department," she said.
The program started seven years ago with Tech Images, the graphics arm of the Communication Technology Academy, and has grown from there. Next year, the school plans to add an information technology academy, in which students will learn how to maintain, service and build customized computers.
In June the school will start a $500,000 renovation of its former library, the future home of the culinary academy. The school still needs about $250,000 for equipment and gas lines, Elia said, adding, "If somebody is throwing away something, it can be our treasure."
Elia said the money the students earn goes back into supporting the businesses, which run solely on word of mouth. "These kinds of activities validate the curriculum that aligns with industry for our students," she said. "They have real experiences with real clients, and that's what makes the difference.
"Here you balance out the relevance of curriculum with the rigor of demands of business," she said.
Michael Barros, career and technical specialist with the state Department of Education, said academies exist at other public schools.
Students at Farrington and Pearl City high schools do catering jobs, and Waipahu High School students run a restaurant, he said.
Students in the agriculture program at Kealakehe High School on the Big Island sell plants and are trying to open accounts with supermarkets to sell their produce.
The Leilehua programs depend on collaboration. Tech Threads students embroider uniforms the students wear. Tech Images design and print brochures, price lists and posters for the other academies. And culinary students use fruits and vegetables grown by agriculture students to prepare everything from zucchini bread to $5 plate lunches for teachers on Tuesdays.
"I love it. This is my only class I like to come to every day," said Daniel Teijeiro, a culinary student whose ambitions include owning his own restaurant.
Teijeiro said professionalism and business etiquette are stressed in the academy. "Be courteous, be nice to everybody, whatever we do is done professionally," he said they are told. "There's no shortcuts or sloppiness whatever."
Hawaii chef Alan Wong, a Leilehua alumnus who comes to the class to demonstrate dishes such as ginger-crusted onaga as well as to give tips on how to make a three-dimensional platter arrangement more attractive, said it was "very nice to see how far they've come."
"I actually had a class in that same classroom that they use, only thing, my class was named Family Foods," he said. "The highlight of that year was making pizza."
Nakamura said students put in a lot of extra time, even coming in this summer to cater desserts for a wedding of 400.
"It's a lot of commitment on their part," Nakamura said. "If we have a job for a breakfast in town, they're here with me at 3:30, 4:30 (in the morning) getting ready to go. I don't have to call them. They're just here when they need to be."