Plainfield East offers a plethora of classes for students to choose from. The Wilco area and career center are just one of many options for rising juniors or seniors. Wilco offers classes for a multitude of career interests, ranging from cosmetology to welding.
Wilco provides an alternative to entering the collegiate track, greatly benefiting those students looking to enter the workforce directly after high school.
“I’ve already gotten many job offers to work at places like workshops that have hands-on work.
I have gotten job offers from B&R trucking, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Audi, and BMW,” said senior Alex Macias.
These programs also provide certifications and training for specific professions. Students can acquire an EMT-b license, nursing assistant license, and fear free certifications, to name a few.
Senior Heidi Enriquez is completing her second veterinary assistant class at Wilco and explains the benefits of these certification courses in relation to her experiences at veterinary clinics.
“During your junior year, if you take both years, you would learn all about the class’s content and how to apply the information [learned] and then senior year you actually administer that information,” said Enriquez. “That’s when we get to work at clinics, and having that fear free certification is an online course that’s given to us from Wilco, and from there, we use that to give us a boost when at a clinic.”
The classes available through Wilco teach students to build helpful techniques that can be applied beyond the confines of a classroom.
“I believe I have learned sufficient skills based on all the clinical time we do. I apply these skills in my outside life by working as a lifeguard and working in the emergency department at St. Joe’s in Joliet,” said senior Cristina Goldman.
Wilco classes do not typically follow the standard teaching style found in most classrooms; they emphasize hands-on learning to help students build proficiency in their areas of expertise.
“This [EMS] course is split between lectures and hands-on skills. For every chapter, there are skills that go along with it. A normal class period for us is half lecture, half hands-on skills,” Goldman said.
However, each class varies in instruction, such as the vet assisting course.
“In vet assisting 1 it’s a lot. There is a lot of paperwork, fill in the blanks; we also have a kennel there. We’ll do course work and work with real live animals. We have a lot of pocket pets and lizards. Our second year it’s a lot more hands-on doing the actual things that we’ll get tested on. There is paperwork, and we do have essays at the end of the year for vet assisting 2,” Enriquez said.
Students interested in pursuing a field that might not be taught through the courses available at Plainfield East may find various advantages to the experiences gained through Wilco.
Wilco offers students new experiences, allowing them to become more involved in their career paths.
“If you aren’t that interested in getting involved outside of school, then I’d say Wilco isn’t necessarily the 110% place you’d want to be in, but if you do want to actually be put into the workforce Wilco is definitely a place you want to go to,” Enriquez said.