On Monday April 29, Skills Canada is going to be coming to Lac La Biche. Portage College is hosting the northeast region of Alberta competition, with the first and second place winners heading to the provincial competition in Edmonton on May 15 and 16.
High school students from around Lac La Biche, Boyle, Athabasca, Slave Lake, St. Paul and Bonnyville, will be making their way to the college to compete in culinary arts, welding, carpentry, hairstyling and TV/video categories.
Lindsey Montpetit, The northeast region competition coordinator with Portage College, says that the competition is important because it gives something for the high school students to be proud of. "The high school students get to be involved and experienced in something that they are good at and they get to compete in,” she said. "If they place, they get to go on to provincials and they get to be recognized [for their work].”
Shaun Phorson, the CEO of Skills Canada Competitions, says that it is important to have competitions like this because it opens up options for students who may not want to go the university path.
"I think it's important because there needs to be more balance to the discussion for young people when they are looking at a career and what they want to do with the rest of their lives,” he said. "There is a lot of focus on university, and there is nothing wrong with people pursuing a university education, but I think there needs to be more balance in the discussion so that when students are trying to make that decision, that they have as much information as possible.”
Once the students arrive at Portage College, they will be set up in their categories and begin their projects, to be judged by individual committees designated to each category.
"The best way to describe it is as the Olympics of skilled trades,” said Phorson. "There's information that is developed in advance for schools to look at give them an idea of what the project would be. Then students show up on the day of and they are provided with all of the final details of whatever the challenge is. It's evaluated, they are ranked, and then the medals are awarded to those that have ranked highest.”
Those who win gold and silver medals in their categories of competition will move on to Edmonton to participate in the provincials, and should they rank highly there, move onto the national competition in Vancouver in June and couple possibly move forward even farther.
"This year, the world's are in Germany,” said Montpetit. "If they make it and they work hard, they can go to world's. This is a big deal and it's something that is awesome [for high school students]. It's a lot for them, but it's fun. I wish that when I was in school, they had something like this that I could compete in.”
Phorson says that the competition not only gives students the chance to compete, but it also shows them what it would be like to put their theory into practice.
"The great thing about the competitions is that it is a combination of theoretical principle and it's very hands-on oriented,” he said. "It gives a really good sense as to what it would be like to work in that specific occupation and just to bring some broader awareness to the careers that are available."
