Each month South Muskoka Doppler highlights a student in the co-op programs at both Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School (BMLSS) and Gravenhurst High School (GHS).
[column size=”1/2″]This month’s student of the month for GHS brought to you by Stevenson Plumbing-Electrical-HVAC is Alexis Rocks.
Gravenhurst High School student Alexis Rocks has always liked hands-on work, where she could take a step back and say “Wow I did that” and feel accomplished that her skills are what made something happen. The pandemic lockdowns happened over her grade 9 and 10 years, so she didn’t have shop classes on her radar because taking that online didn’t appeal to her. As a result, she didn’t have a broad awareness of career options in the trades because she just didn’t have access to that pathway information. When she returned to regular learning she still didn’t have construction on her radar, but chats with her dad changed that. He talked about how there will always be jobs in the trades, so they offer a solid future. He told her that a career as an electrician offers a solid future, plus her grandfather was one so she could follow in his path. So, when she picked her courses for grade 12, she made sure to enroll in the Electrical Installations dual credit course, which gave her both a high school and college credit, but more importantly, it gave her time on the tools in the trade. Her first big challenge in the dual credit was making her own extension cord and she loved it and wanted to keep learning as much as possible.
She had also added a half-day of co-op to her schedule, which allowed her to try out the trade while earning credits. She felt her time at Neviss Systems working on a lot of local commercial service jobs around Gravenhurst gave her good exposure to that side of the trade, and the crew there encouraged her to keep going on a full-day placement for second semester, but to try another company that would get her access to even bigger projects. She took their advice and joined the team at Hunter Electric, where they focus on long-build projects with multiple trades working on-site, such as apartment complexes and municipal builds. She felt extra welcome when she learned that both owners are GHS grads who took co-op in high school and went on to be electricians, and the journeyman electrician who is assigned as her mentor on the job site is a former Gryphon too. She really loves the work and is proud to say that she can now do the majority of the tasks that the rest of the electricians on the team do, including running the wire, installing fixtures, big panel work, and whatever else it takes to move from rough-in to finished product.
Thanks to her co-op experience this year, she’s confident that Electrician is the career pathway for her, and she wants to continue completing her apprenticeship in Muskoka working on commercial jobs. She wants to explore opportunities in bigger cities to get a change of scenery when she’s licensed, and eventually own her own company with her own crew. She’s proud that she knows she’ll have the confidence to take on tasks like renovating her own house and repairing her own car as she faces those opportunities in the future.
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