CAREER CONNECTIONS

Welcome to the Career Café. This café is a special training café created within the Wayne County Schools Career Center Hospitality program to help prepare students for future employment in a café or restaurant setting.

The Hospitality program focuses on helping students master skills needed in the restaurant and hospitality industry such as customer service, laundry, cleaning, menu planning, cooking, dishwashing, and making hotel beds. Graduates of this program can work in restaurants, cafes, hotels, and other service-based businesses.

The Career Café is open exclusively to the staff of the Career Center three days per week during the school year serving breakfast and lunch. Patrons can choose from a variety of muffins, cookies, cinnamon rolls, special ordered donuts, hot and cold subs, wraps, and personal pizzas.

Hospitality students are involved in every aspect of the café’s operation including planning the menu, taking orders, preparing food, washing dishes, and point-of-sale customer service. Special orders and catering can also be arranged.

In the past, Hospitality has been responsible for catering numerous events held at the career center including luncheons, breakfasts, advisory committee meetings, Board of Education meetings, the school’s 50th anniversary in 2019, and visits from state officials.

Working closely with local business and industry is one of the things that sets the career center apart from other schools and training programs. Local businesses often come to the career center when looking to fill vacancies or hire for new positions. Hospitality has placed students in many local businesses including cafés, restaurants, and hospitals.

The Automotive Technologies and Diesel Technologies programs at the Wayne County Schools Career Center have recently undergone extensive renovations, not only to update the spaces but to update the technology and capabilities learned there.

The technology built into vehicles is constantly changing and the techniques and methods to troubleshoot and repair vehicles changes right along with it. Garages and repair shops have evolved into clean, technologically advanced service centers. Students need to be able to learn in the environment and with the tools, they will be using once they graduate and transition into the working world.

With the help of top local industry leaders, new spaces were designed and renovated to provide the latest technology for students to train and learn the skills needed to diagnose and repair vehicles of all makes and models. New vehicles were also donated to the Career Center by local dealers to ensure students can work on the latest available models. With the same equipment and software found in professional service centers, students will be well acquainted with all vehicle systems, diagnostic, preventative, and repair techniques.

With so many opportunities to earn industry-recognized credentials, these students can graduate with an impressive portfolio and resume as well as the confidence to succeed in their chosen career.

Hospitality offers the opportunity to work in fun, lively environments, from restaurants and bars to hotels and spas. But even more, careers in hospitality can offer lucrative employment options, and often do not require applicants to hold traditional degrees. Many positions in the hospitality industry offer jobseekers to start as an apprentice or entry-level employee and work their way up through gaining on-the-job experience. While the entry-level salary for a concierge or sous-chef, for example, may not always be very high, these positions can allow for quick growth to the upper echelons of salary ranks within the hospitality industry.

What kind of hospitality job is right for you?

Hospitality is an industry for people who like to put a smile on others’ faces. Some do so directly, by greeting guests at a hotel door or giving massages to spa visitors, while others do so indirectly, by creating gastronomical wonders in the kitchen of a restaurant or planning and executing the perfect party. Which field of hospitality you choose to go into all depends on what your interests are — whether it’s food and beverages, hotels, casinos, or travel — and on what your ultimate career and pay goals are. So on that note, which hospitality jobs earn the most money?

FOOD AND BEVERAGE DIRECTOR - Salary Range $48,000 - $102,000 per year

Food and beverage directors are typically employed by restaurants, hotels and large institutions like schools and hospitals. Creating and overseeing menus, controlling food costs and managing inventory are just a few of the duties required. Being a food and beverage director requires the ability to work with large teams in a fast-paced environment, rigorous attention to detail and - of course - a passion for food and drinks.

HOTEL OPERATIONS MANAGER - Salary Range $52,000 - $114,000 per year

Hotel operations managers are in charge of keeping a hotel functioning smoothly on a daily basis. This includes managing the hotel's housekeeping, food services, human resources, concierges and other personnel who help the hotel run every day. Hotel operations manager also may have a hand in hiring and training staff, as well as looking after marketing, sales and PR for the hotel. If you're looking for a fast-paced role that requires the use of many different skills, then hotel operations may be a good fit.

EXECUTIVE CHEF - Salary Range $44,000 - $85,000 per year

An executive chef is in charge of all food preperation and other culinary activities at a restaurant. They help hire, train and manage other kitchen personnel and wait staff. Being an executive chef usually requires extensive experience in the restaurant industry.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT - Salary Range $26,000 - $62,000 per year

If you love to travel, it's hard to think of a better job than being a flight attendant (or a pilot).

Flight attendants work to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers during flights. Flight attendants may work domestically, flying on shorter flights between states, or internationally, on long-haul flights. Flight attendants often get to spend time in the places they travel to for work, and on top of their yearly salary, they often get significant discounts on airline tickets, making it easy to travel the world.

EXECUTIVE PASTRY CHEF - Salary Range $24,000 - $63,000 per year

An executive pastry chef is in charge of peparing desserts and baking bread at a bakery, restaurant or other culinary establishment. Their role also encompasses developing new dessert and bread recipes, inventorying ingredients, monitoring costs and managing other pastry-making employees. Executive pastry chefs often either gain a degree in pastry-making or apprentice with a pastry maker to gain skills in their craft.

EVENT PLANNER/MANAGER - Salary Range $38,000 - $77,000 per year

Event planners/managers are employed in a variety of industries. Essentially, event managers work to organize, run and promote events for businesses, organizations and individuals. This involves hiring personnel such as DJ's, photographers and waiters, accurately budgeting the event, coordinating operation and being on call for any issues that might arise before or during the event. A person interested in this career must be detail-oriented people, responsible, and - of course - know how to throw a good party!

MASSAGE THERAPIST - Salary Range $27,000 - $73,000 per year

Massage therapists are employed in a variety of establishments with in the hospitality industry, including hotels, cruise ships, resorts and private massage clinics. Many massage therapists choose to become a certified massage therapist, which can open up mor job opportunities.

Hospitality Career Paths

The hospitality industry is a place where experience matters most. From being hired as a pastry chef to scoring a gig as a food and beverage director, having experience is the key to proving yourself. You can also gain a leg up, of course — depending on which field you enter within hospitality — through formal training, such as cooking school, a college degree in hospitality, or different types of masseuse certifications.

Shipping Containers have become massively popular and creatively utilized over the last few decades. They are so widely used today, that they are practically indispensable.

In 1956 Malcolm McLean was in search of a way to ship his company’s entire truckload of supplies quickly and safely. He purchased Pan Atlantic Tanker Company including all its assets and started experimenting with new ways to load and unload goods from trucks for travel. He eventually invented and patented the first shipping container.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

By: Cara Nissman | November 11, 2020

Click Here For Full Article

Students with disabilities who are nearing postsecondary transition need to figure out what they want to do with their lives after high school and have work-based learning experiences. These needs don’t change because students are learning remotely. Adults just have to be creative in how they communicate and collaborate to ensure students get the most out of virtual activities.

Transition coordinators, vocational-rehabilitation counselors and others who support students at this stage also have to ensure they track their work with students on virtual activities and experiences to make sure they meet their transition goals in their IEPs.

“You need to be documenting what you’re doing,” says Michael Stoehr, a knowledge development and technical assistance specialist for the National Technical Assistance Center on Transition at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. “You have to follow up on virtual activities. If you’re not following up and documenting it, how are you going to know what’s happening with kids?”

The transition coordinator should be communicating and collaborating with vocational rehabilitation and other community providers and strive to have everyone use the same platform to connect with the student that the district is using for remote learning, Stoehr says. “Be consistent as you can be.”

Also ensure everyone working with the child has realistic expectations. For example, no one should have a student sitting at the computer for an hour-long career exploration activity. Try 15 minutes or less, then seek student feedback. “We want to make sure what we’re putting out there is appropriate and reasonable,” he says.

Just because students can’t shadow someone in an industry of interest in person does not mean they have to wait to see what different jobs entail. Many states and organizations offer websites with free videos that lend insight into various careers. For instance, www.nebraskacareerclusters.com, sponsored by Nebraska’s Department of Education, Department of Labor, and Department of Economic Development, offers videos of nearly 20 different industries in which professionals discuss job requirements, workplace environments, job expectations, salary ranges, and other details. Discussion guides with worksheets accompany all the videos, so transition coordinators or others can go over with students what they learn.

Students can also explore various careers while visiting www.CareerOneStop.org, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment, and Training Administration, Stoehr says. They can watch videos to learn what a job is like, the level of education and skills needed, average salary, and the likelihood of job opportunities in the future.

Students can research online what is involved in getting a job and maintaining it. For example, at explore-work.com, a collaboration between the Workforce Innovation Technical Assistance Center and The George Washington University, students can go through training modules, including ones about self-advocacy, work experiences, career planning, and workplace readiness, Stoehr says. “The cool thing about the site is it provides staff a summary of how the student did [on a course] and the student can receive a certificate of completion.”

To ensure students have practice writing resumes, doing job interviews and engaging in other aspects of career exploration and preparation, Stoehr says transition coordinators or others may want to have them go through the free modules on www.cctstfolio.com. The T-Folio, created by the Center for Change in Transition Services at Seattle University with funding from the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, offers everything from skills, strengths, preferences and needs assessments to guidance on how to write a thank-you note after a job interview, and how to set goals for self-advocacy.