#1StudentNWI: PCCTC’s Career Cafe and Building Trades Bring Experience to Students

#1StudentNWI: PCCTC’s Career Cafe and Building Trades Bring Experience to Students

What’s Happening

With the opening of the Porter County Career Center’s new store, run by the Entrepreneurship Sports and Entertainment Marketing class, the class and teacher responsible for the store have found themselves with additional obligations. A certain level of innovation is required to maintain the variety of goods they sell as well as to keep students and staff content with the consumables they provide.

With innovation being front and center, they continuously find ways to add new products into the store. They’ve added hot breakfast foods to sell, nachos with cheese, pretzels, pizza rolls, and many more items that the students and staff are pleased to have available to them.

They’ve also added the “Career Cart” as one of the store’s features. The “Career Cart” is a delivery system where teachers can order items like cupcakes and other goods for their class, or they can send them to a different class. This is a good way to reward students for their hard work at the Porter County Career Center.

The store’s name is the “Career Cafe” and it definitely lives up to the name.

The students of the Entrepreneurship Sports and Entertainment Marketing class wanted a theme that resembled a cafe appearance. With the dim lights and music playing in the store, it seems more of a relaxed area to have a break from class and have some snacks and drinks.

With the cafe theme, they also wanted to involve other schools in this year’s theme along with the classes that the Porter County Career Center offers.

With the way the Career Cafe is running, it looks like business won’t slow down anytime soon!

What’s Coming Up?

1Student-PCCTC-Dec-2017-02The Entrepreneurship Sports and Entertainment Marketing class and the Strategic Marketing Internship Class have a bond with almost the entire student body and staff.

With that being said, students like doing things for a notable cause and The Porter County Career Center Store has branched off to sell items whose proceeds will benefit a good cause.

The students from the two business classes are selling Candy Grams. Candy Grams can be sent to other students throughout the school or bought individually.

The money the two business classes make off the Candy Grams will go to the Loeys-Dietz Syndrome Foundation, an organization dedicated to encouraging education and funding research about Loeys-Dietz syndrome, which affects the connective tissues of the body.

Katherine Gray, an a.m. and p.m. student at the Porter County Career Center for Health Occupations, has Loeys-Dietz syndrome, but that doesn’t change the bubbly and fun personality she has at school and towards others!

Ms. Ammons, teacher of Entrepreneurships Sports and Entertainment Marketing and Strategic Marketing Internship, says Gray is an absolute delight to talk to.

With a student within the school being affected, the business classes that are selling Candy Grams are proud to donate their earnings toward a great cause. It shows that even a small store can make a big impact.

Teacher Spotlight

1Student-PCCTC-Dec-2017-03Teachers at the Porter County Career and Technical Center are extremely dedicated. They want students to excel in their classes and find the best ways to encourage a bright future. What all teachers have in common, at the Career Center, is they have a stellar background in the fields they teach.

Mrs. Biernat, teacher of the Construction Trades class, knows what she’s doing when it comes to teaching her course to her students.

“I teach construction trades,” Biernat said. “It’s beyond basic carpentry skills. I try to give them an overview of construction. We have a textbook that goes off of modern carpentry. It covers all elements of construction. We also have projects that are more hands-on learning.”

Mrs. Biernat likes to “fire” her students up. She wants her students to get excited about construction.

“People think of construction as men with hammers building houses,” Biernat said. “Construction is so much bigger than that.”

Mrs. Biernat always asks her students who will build the next big thing next. This gives them the drive and will to do something extraordinary.

Mrs. Biernat has experience in residential construction.

“I did hands-on construction carpentry, self taught for about twenty years,” Biernat said. “When I was 40, I went to Purdue and received my degrees in architecture and construction engineering technology. Then I started commercial construction in the United States.”

She’s built many hotels, worked in steel mills, and worked with a lot of commercial products. When comercial construction started to slow down, she went back to residential remodeling work.

“I did high-end residential remodeling in Chicago. I was able to do a $500,000 kitchen remodel,” said Biernat.

Mrs. Biernat’s experience in her field gives her much credibility when teaching her course, and adds expertise to the friendly faces around the school.

Student Spotlight

1Student-PCCTC-Dec-2017-04The students at the Porter County Career and Technical Center are familiar with a lot of hands-on work. This attribute is one of the key things that seperates the career center from other schools in the area.

Students of the Construction Trades class, Madilyn Mayernik and Jacob Evers, are examples of students that are completely familiar with the type of hands-on work they do.

“I like how this class is mostly hands on,” Evers said. “I like how we can design our own projects.” “I like the hands on work, too,” Mayernik agreed. “I like that we get to work with other students and we get to learn what we will need in the field. With book work, you don’t get to learn as well as you do with the hands on projects.”

Both students are seniors at Valparaiso High School and they are 2nd year students at the Porter County Career and Technical Center. Both Mayernik and Evers are always eager and excited to head out to the depot to see what their next task is for class.

“If something doesn’t come out right, I like learning how to fix it and figuring out a solution,” Mayernik explained.

Both students have been around construction since their younger years. This gave them a starting interest for the construction field.

Evers and Mayernik advise future students to be prepared to work and act as if this were a real life job.