Students put their skilled trades to work
Niagara Catholic District School Board’s Launch Centre preparing youth for future opportunities
Whether it’s partnering with businesses in downtown Niagara Falls, Niagara Humane Society, or Niagara Health, students and teachers at Niagara Catholic District School Board’s Launch Centre have been busy working on several unique projects.
Several high-school students have been getting hands-on experience and a head start on their college education during the current academic semester through a project with the Downtown Niagara Falls Business Improvement Area.
As part of the work initiative between the school board and Niagara College, 17 students from across the region have been working on Christmas vendor booths for an outdoor Christmas market to be held over six weekends in downtown Niagara Falls.
Students worked together to build multiple Christmas cabins, so vendors would have a sheltered place to operate out of during the market, which will be held every weekend from Saturday until Dec. 20.
The team-taught, all-day construction co-op program allows students to earn credits simultaneously for high school and college.
During the course, students develop an understanding of the numerous structural components and installation processes that combine to produce a typical residential or light commercial project.
The program allows students to work with a college instructor in a high-school setting.
The collaboration helps support students to consider a pathway to college, and better prepares them for the transi
tion to post-secondary education, said Niagara College instructor Claude Demers.
Dino Nardangeli, a construction teacher at the launch centre and with Notre Dame College School, said the project allows students to develop their hands-on skills.
“Any opportunity for team effort and community building is a great way to show how collaborating and working together really gets the job done,” he said.
“The students gain construction experience, which will help support them on their traderelated co-op placement. The students came up with the designs for the project, as well as built prototypes of the booths.”
The final prototype was approved by the BIA, said Nardangeli.
The launch centre is located at the Seaway Mall in Welland.
Nardangeli is just one of several teachers at the centre, which
also includes other trades-related disciplines.
In addition to the project for downtown Niagara Falls, Nardangeli said students have built two types of doghouses for the Niagara Humane Society. The doghouses will be going to an Indigenous community in Winnipeg.
He said students have made small Minecraft boxes that can hold building blocks, made from recycled wood, which will be donated to kindergarten classes.
The centre is also partnering with the Welland hospital on a project that will benefit Alzheimer and dementia patients through the Music and Memory program.
Nardangeli said the students are refurbishing an old dashboard from a 1960s car.
“We built a frame out of wood for it that shows a front of a car window,” he said.
“We’re putting a video screen
in the back of it. (It’s) going to play videos with music that they can push the buttons (for) different genres. It brings them back in time.”
He said students and teachers from the automotive, computer engineering, and robotics classes are also part of the project.
Nardangeli said hospital officials made a presentation to students and teachers about how music can help people living with dementia make memory connections.
“It’s a pretty cool project that we’re trying to finish.”
In the past, students built a cabinet that can hold headsets, as part of the Music and Memory program.
Ryan Ward, a Grade 12 student at Denis Morris Catholic High School in St. Catharines, said the launch centre offers “the best on-job training you could possibly get in a high-school level education.”
“Anything you could possibly
think of, or anything you’d want to learn in the trades, you could learn at the launch centre,” he said.
Ward said the centre has “great” teachers who are “always willing” to answer questions.
“I’ve stayed after school a couple times and talked to my teacher about the different post-secondary options and apprenticeships out there – we learn about all that.”
He said it can be “hard” for students in high school to decide what they may want to pursue as a career.
“It’s a big decision to make, whether you want to go into the trades or maybe you want to find something else. This experience, for me personally, has been like, ‘yeah, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’”