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Dominican Republic RPCV Wilhelmina Pinheiro began teaching a career skills course to Rainshadow students earlier this month and hopes to find area businesses that will employ her students this summer
Dominican Republic RPCV Wilhelmina Pinheiro began teaching a career skills course to Rainshadow students earlier this month and hopes to find area businesses that will employ her students this summer
Charter school students learn job-hunting skills
Caption: Rainshadow Community Charter High School independent studies director Wilhelmina Pinheiro poses with students who are learning career skills. Pinheiro is trying to help the students land internships with local businesses.
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
3/21/2004 09:40 pm
Cleaning carpets and working carnivals isn’t the way Robert Massey wants to spend another summer, even if it means being paid in cash.
“I’ve always had a job over the summer but I’ve never particularly enjoyed it,” said Massey, 16, a student at Rainshadow Community Charter High School in Reno. “School gives me necessary social skills to go out and confidently apply for a (preferable) job.”
As the school year comes to a close, students begin to contemplate summer work.
AmeriCorps USA volunteer Wilhelmina Pinheiro began teaching a career skills course to Rainshadow students earlier this month and hopes to find area businesses that will employ her students this summer.
Pinheiro was brought onboard to work with students on business letter writing, telephone manners, interviewing skills, computer literacy and keyboarding skills.
“Some of the students like interoffice, clerical or computer and one is fond of art and others are interested in automotive and mechanical,” Pinheiro said.
Massey said he plans to bag groceries this summer but would like to try his hand at architecture or locksmithing in the future, especially after he and classmate Nico Pitts began assisting architects who are remodeling the first-year school on Washington Street.
“I just learned to weld this year and I’ve been working on cars since I was old enough to stand up straight,” said Pitts, 14. “When I was three, my dad could name any tool and I could hand it to him.”
Pinheiro previously was a Peace Corps worker in the Dominican Republic and taught at Heald College in San Francisco and at several places in Hawaii, including Cannon College of Commerce and Hawaii Business School.
Pinheiro has a one-year assignment at the charter school, which serves about 80 students. But the school doesn’t have the exposure or business connections in the community that some of the county’s traditional high schools have developed.
Rainshadow student Melissa Sain became interested in computers at age 10 and said she hopes to get a summer job working in the field.
“I blew up my computer and began taking it apart and putting it back together,” said Sain, 15.
Jon Bryant said he’d like to coach football or basketball at the high school or college level and would like to get involved in coaching summer little league. He said was drawn to the field after asking questions of his former little league coach and that developing positive habits and personal skills now will be beneficial in the future.
“You have to be able to communicate with the players and have good team chemistry to be successful,” said Bryant, 16.