By Ted Hayes for East Bay RI.

Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for New England News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration.

Up at 3:30 a.m. On the road by 4:30. At work by 5:30, every day.

Jada Thurston, 19, has a clear plan for her future and can see it taking shape before her. Six months after graduating from Westport High School, and about a year after completing a new trades program offered in Westport for the first time last year, Jada is training full-time in sheetmetal work and knows what awaits if she applies herself — learning a trade, landing a good job building submarines for Electric Boat at Quonset Point, saving every penny she can. Building on her skills and learning new ones, electrical among them. Taking all that knowledge and opening her own business in Westport. Eventually, working with her father, who gave her his love for tools and hard work. Securing a good life.

“I’m very excited,” said Jada, a standout on the field hockey team during her time in Westport, but never a traditional student.

“School was never really my thing. I’ve always loved to work and that’s always just what I wanted to do. This is worth the effort.”

Next Gen

Jada is the first Westport student to land a well-paid training assignment with Electric Boat through the military contractor’s “The Boat for NEXT GEN,” a program that introduces high school juniors and seniors who might not be college-bound to six trades in need of workers: Welding, shipfitting, electrical, sheetmetal, pipe fitting and machining.

Those who complete the program, like Jada last year, are invited to apply for training when they graduate, and then for a full time position complete with 401K, longevity bonuses, health insurance, annuities and more after.

Jada started her paid training months ago and by the new year, expects to complete it and land that full time position in early 2026. If that happens, and she expects it will, she’ll work at Quonset Point in North Kingstown, RI, building submarine hulls for the United States Navy.

From there, she sees her future as limitless.

“It’s a lot of work and it’s not for everybody,” she said Monday afternoon after finishing the day’s eight-hour shift at the Westerly Education Center in southern Rhode Island.

“But if you like to work and it’s for you, there’s a lot of potential.”

First in the state

Though several schools in Rhode Island and Connecticut take part in the program, Westport is the first district in the Commonwealth to participate. While the twice-weekly after school sessions in Westerly require a long drive for the students, teachers and staff members, the instructors who help run the program say it’s worth it. They see the spark it has lit in many of their students.

“It’s phenomenal,” said WHS college and career teacher Regina Mercer of the program, made possible by a grant from the Westport Education Foundation. “Just an amazing opportunity for kids who don’t have a lot of direction and need a little nudge, or who don’t plan on college but want to learn” about a trade.

“These kids aren’t interested in the most part in a four-year college, so to have a program of study that’s going to lead them directly to a job is great,” teacher Dan Moriarty added. “I’m very excited for them.”

NEXT GEN’s next group

As Jada was getting ready to hop in her 2007 Camry for the drive home after Monday’s eight-hour training shift, six of this year’s group of eight high school students pulled up in front of the campus in a white Westport Community Schools van. Moriarty was with them as was Rick Monast, the high school’s media center specialist. It was the last of this year’s six sessions and the subject for the day was sheetmetal work.

Like Jada, most of the students don’t see themselves as college kids, but several said that learning about the skills they’ll need in the trades seemed like a good opportunity and so they jumped.

Julian Jacob’s senior paper focuses on the rising cost of college, and he enrolled to explore options to a prohibitively expensive post-secondary education with no guarantees — “it’s been great,” he said.

Charlotte Orr hopes to apply for training upon her graduation, and said her favorite sessions to date have been shipfitting and electrical. A relative works as an electrician and she said she thinks that as a detail-oriented person, she would be good at it too. But she also loved shipfitting — “cutting the metal with a torch was super fun.”

Two teaching assistants greeted them at the door. After handing out safety glasses, ear plugs and work gloves, they brought the kids into one of the campus’s large shops, where a mockup of a gigantic section of submarine hull greeted them. The room was filled with metal bending brakes, shears, band saws and other industrial equipment.

Former students who took shop classes in their youth will likely remember the many mementos they made along the way — ceramic trinkets, wooden mailboxes, metal candle holders and other bits. For Monday’s group, the job was to build an aluminum cell phone holder from sheet aluminum.

Though it was just a small thing, it introduced them to core sheetmetal skills they’ll need if they decide to further their studies, among them bending, sheering, riveting, precise measuring and more. Far from comprehensive, the session was a taste.

Each student was given a bag of tools including a combination square, scribe, tape measure and wire cutters, and they were led through the steps needed to complete the piece.

By the time the session ended at about 6:15 p.m., they walked out with their holders in hand, a little new knowledge, and perhaps a spark.

Though instructors don’t presume that every student enrolled in the program will apply for a training position after they graduate, Westport teachers said the classes are a ray of light and represent a huge opportunity for the right kids.

“The kids have been phenomenal both years,” Mercer said. “It’s such a great opportunity. And even if they’re not hired or don’t apply (for paid training), it looks good on a resumé. It’s just wonderful hands-on training.”

Ted Hayes wrote this article for East Bay RI.

Source: Public News Service