Sometimes when you ask, you do receive.
That’s what Salmon Arm Secondary automotive teacher Gary Lebeter discovered last week. Lebeter emailed GM Canada’s corporate office in Oshawa, Ont. describing the school’s first-year automotive apprenticeship program.
“It’s a first-year college course for level one of a four-year apprenticeship, and I asked if we qualified for any donations,” Lebeter says, with a happy chuckle. “They got back to me a couple of days later and said we have this Saturn Ion we’d love to give you.”
That was the good news. The better news was that the 2003 Ion, returned in a GM buy-back program, was already in Salmon Arm.
“All we had to do was pick it up,” Lebeter says. “We’re not allowed to sell or licence the car, it’s strictly for training purposes.”
And the year of the car gives Lebeter reason to chuckle too.
“We take donations from the general public and most of what we have here are older cars,” he says of the vehicles students usually train on. “But having this later model, it gives them an opportunity to work on something they’d experience in a shop, something new and relevant.”
Approved by the Industry Training Authority, Lebeter’s students are with him in the school’s automotive shop from 9:15 a.m. to 3:15 school days and his is the only class they take. Unlike high school courses in which 50 per cent is a passing grade, students in the automotive course require 70 per cent to pass.
“It’s a tougher course but it’s a dual-credit course,” he says. “They get 16 high school credits, and at end of the course, they write a government exam. If they get 70 per cent, they get first-year technical training.”
Of the 17 grade 10 to 12 students enrolled in Lebeter’s class, four are girls. And while most of them are from Salmon Arm, the class includes two students from Sicamous, one from Armstrong and two from Enderby. Most of the students have taken Lebeter’s automotive 11-12 class and have decided on automotive repair as a career.
“These are people getting a head start so when they graduate they’re a second-year apprentice and they’re more employable,” he says. “I think it’s incredible, I wish they had had that in my school, it’s my favourite class to teach,” he laughs.
