At PJCC we have had the opportunity to develop some amazing WBL sites for our students. One such site is Buckeye Elementary School District (BESD). Six students have successfully completed WBL assignments at this facility. Most recently, Jordan Woodruff (A+ Student) completed his WBL assignment with them. Here is what he had to say about his experience.

Thank you for letting me take this opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings about my work based learning (WBL) experience at the BESD, Technology Department.
Upon being accepted for the WBL assignment, I was nervous and unsure if this WBL worksite would be “for me”. Thoughts of “what kind of things would I encounter”, “what tasks would I be put to do”, “who would I meet”, and most of importantly, “would I have to interact with the young kids?”
Well, I have to tell you, my day to day work during my WBL assignment was honestly one of the best experiences I have ever had. Daily, I had hands-on real- time, field tech experience
I had the opportunity to answer multiple work orders and roam each of the 6 schools within the school district; Jazinski, Westpark, Sundance, Buckeye Middle, Inca, and Bales. Each day was different, I did everything from either “imaging a PC” which simply put is a full and complete custom reinstallation of a PC’s Operating system. Replacing mechanical parts or pulling out power supplies when ever the power grid would crash. No matter what the day to day adventures were they were always different and never the same.
My time in WBL has given me the opportunity to apply what I have spent 6 months learning in the A+ trade. The ability to work on and take the time to fix PC’s, work with actual clients, and experience the rush of needing to rip out and replace over 40 power supply units in one day will be things I will not forget for years to come.
I have had several different types of jobs on my life. From retail, food service to door to door sales and I have discovered that the short time I spent at BESD was the best job I have had to date.
In closing my thoughts about this total experience is that if anybody in the Job Corps School is given the same chance to work hands-on in a place they have interest in they should do it! It’s a once in a life time chance to work in the field you are interested in.
Now for my future after WBL is that I will continue gaining my certifications through Phoenix Job Corps and go back to college. But from this experience I feel that I will be changing my college plan and possibly my over all future career goals.
I would like to thank Mr. Juan Pino, Mr. Robert Alvarez, Mr. Chad Cooper, Mr. John Long from Buckeye Elementary, and Mr. Anthony Riveria from Arizona Call-a-teen for this amazing experience.
Thank you
Jordan James Woodruff