The Garden City Telegram
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Real-world lessons
Published 2/5/2010 in Local News
By MONICA SPRINGER
A trip to Garden City on Thursday showed a group of Lakin sixth-graders the good and bad paths they can take in life, and how the choices they make go a long way to determining which path they're going to take.
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Laurie Sisk/Telegram Garden City Community College welding instructors Tom Brungardt, left, and Kurt Wenzel demonstrate a cutting torch to Lakin students on Thursday at Garden City Community College.
Each year, Wendy Hill, a sixth-grade teacher at Lakin Middle School, takes her students on a tour of Garden City Community College and the Southwest Kansas Regional Juvenile Detention Center. The tour is called the Lakin's Future Tour.
Hill did not attend this year because of a family emergency, but the students still went on the tour with Tammie Sabata, their principal, and another teacher, Tim Blackburn.
Sabata said the purpose was to expose students to more careers other than traditional careers and let students know where a life of poor choices could leave them.
"Sixth grade is a vital age," Sabata said, because that's when students start thinking about what they want to do when they are older.
The students toured the juvenile detention center on Thursday morning, where they learned what life is like for kids who are in trouble with the law.
Staff there said students who are in juvenile detention aren't allowed to have cell phones or iPods.
And the kids didn't like that, Blackburn said.
"We want them to be successful," Sabata said. "We want to show them that this isn't a place they want to be."
The students toured the criminal justice department at GCCC and were fingerprinted, taught how to fingerprint objects, and rode in a police car simulator.
They also toured child care, cosmetology, welding and nursing departments, along with taking a tour of dorm rooms.
Paden Hill, 11, and Mariah Campbell, 12, said after the tour they are interested in criminal justice as a career field. They also liked the welding demonstration and seeing a college dorm room, they said.
Kent Kolbeck, an instructor in the John Deere Program at GCCC, told the students how much technology has changed recently. He said there are about 10 to 12 computers in each new tractor farmers use today.
And technology that he taught his students a year ago is now outdated, so he goes to school each year to learn the new technology to teach his students.
"These guys have to be on their toes," he said, adding that once students enter the job field they have to learn new skills daily.
After Kolbeck talked with the students and answered their questions, the students took turns climbing onto the tractors and sitting in the cab.
Before taking the tour Thursday, the students learned some real-life lessons earlier in the week. They called certain Lakin businesses and figured out how much money they would make in a month working there, and what an average apartment costs. Then they watched a video about living on minimum wage, Hill said.
Hill said the students found it difficult to live on minimum wage.
Campbell said she learned that it's important to have a job and to learn specific skills related to that job.
"It's important to go to college and learn," she said.
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