CPS career program sends fashion students out of classrooms and into businesses

Late in the afternoon in a small shop in Bronzeville, Shantel Gibbons carefully guides silk and satin through a sewing machine. Sharod Baker, the owner and manager of Mahogany, which specializes in custom-made gowns, stands behind the Wendell Phillips High School senior, approving and critiquing her work.

Since December, Baker has mentored six fashion-design students who are part of the Chicago Public School system’s Education to Careers (ETC) program. The five seniors and one junior, who volunteer their time and do not earn school credit for their time at Mahogany, are part of a major citywide trend in vocational education.

The professional, on-the-job skills these students are obtaining are a far cry from traditional high-school vocational programs, which have focused on classroom learning and workshops. Although some Chicago schools still feature classic auto-repair and shop classes, students are increasingly heading from schoolyards into businesses to gain real-world skills and experience.

“Vocational education in the past was kind of a dumping ground for students who wouldn’t go to college,” Maji Ford Steele, an ETC Partnership Development Manager who works to develop student internships and job-shadowing opportunities with Chicago-area businesses, said February 22. “But we’re actually training students in careers that will provide a livable wage. They’re [training] in pretty much every major industry that there is.”

The six students working at Mahogany are not employees, although they receive stipends from Baker amounting to about $4 per hour. They come to the studio and retail business, located at 260 E. 35th St., to develop their passion for fashion whenever they have time after-school and on weekends.

After nearly two months of training at Mahogany, Gibbons, 17, is more in love with fashion designing than ever. “It’s a way for me to express my creative side,” she said February 21 while cutting fabric on a measuring board. “It’s a way to express myself.”

Last fall Baker, who opened Mahogany in October 2004, contacted ETC officials and offered the program’s aspiring fashion designers a chance to develop their skills in a professional setting. Although the 33-year-old business owner has not yet officially partnered with ETC, he hopes to do so later this year.

“[Baker’s] program is unique, in terms of the magnitude of the numbers of students he’s serving,” said Steele. “A lot of employers will only take on a few students at a time.”

Around 30,000 Chicago Public School students are part of ETC, according to Steele.

The program relies on its business partners to provide students with up-to-date technical training that prepares students for post-secondary education, advanced career training or immediate jobs after graduation, according to the program’s Web site (www.etcchicago.com). ETC is currently partnered with a handful of Chicago-area companies, including Lord and Taylor and After Hours Tuxedo, according to Steele.

But Baker thinks the program’s three-year fashion-design curriculum, which students begin sophomore year alongside regular academic classes, should incorporate even more partnerships with Chicago’s fashion design world.

“Apprenticeships are a lost tradition that we need to reinstate now,” Baker said in his shop February 21. “By not offering alternatives to college prep programs, we’re losing our youth. Every business should have incentives to do this.”

He believes the city should provide businesses with monetary incentives to train ETC students part-time and improve their professional skills.

James Peterson, another ETC Partnership Development Manager, agrees that the program should be more oriented toward workplace experience to give students a competitive edge upon graduation. Still, he is confident that ETC has been a vital part of participating students’ educations.

“We’ve found that the kids who do complete the three-year program do much better in their academic program and test scores, GPA and graduation rates,” Peterson said.

Baker sees himself as mentoring young future business-owners.

“My dream is that, once they leave my shop, they go somewhere and open their own shop. I’m trying to give them skills that will be very valuable and rare,” he said.

His dream may soon come true. Gibbons will enroll at the International Academy of Design & Technology this fall.