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GRAFTON, Mass. - At Grafton High School, the Business and Computer Science Department is doing its best to bring real life experience to its students while offering the town a glimpse of what students are learning.
"What we really try to do is educate and incorporate the community, so that the community understands what we're doing here and also to try to bring them in," said Computer Science teacher Neil Harrigan. "There are so many resources in this community that I think would be great in the classroom."
Harrigan's web design class has been designing website for local businesses for a few years now, and in other classes, students are getting a first-hand look at how the skills they're learning in class can be applied out in the "real world."
In Tammy D'Amato's Intro to Business class, local business people conduct mock job interviews with students.
"It's a lot different getting interviewed by someone you don't know than if we just did the interviews ourselves," Harrigan said with a laugh.
The computer science class attends a conference at Framingham State University every year, and the accounting class gets a visit from members of a Westborough accounting firm, who talk about the careers paths one can take in accounting, which, Harrigann says "are not what most people think accountants do."
The Sports and Entertainment Management students get to visit Fenway Park in September and meet members of the Red Sox business organization to see how non-baseball operations are run behind the scenes.
In personal finance, students even get to do their own house inspections and learn how to negotiate when purchasing a car.
Computer Science students get the chance to show their mainframe coding prowess at IBM's Mastering the Mainframe contest, which took place three weeks ago.
In the school's third year competing at the three-stage event which drew 3,900 students from over 400 schools across the U.S. and Canada, 13 GHS students completed Part 1 of the contest, earning IBM Master the Mainframe t-shirts.
Two seniors, Joshua Dande and Zackary Rutfield, were two of the first 60 students to complete Part 2, winning $100 gift cards for their efforts. Dande came in 11th overall, and GHS tied for first with the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts with the most Part 2 finishers.
The department has plans to build a school store at the new Grafton High School once it opens. Each class in the department would have a different role in running the store.
Marketing students, for example, will be developing the logo, branding and advertising, and bring students (read: customers) into the store. Meanwhile, the accounting class will be keeping the books, and specially selected interns will manage and run the store when it's open.
"We'll have a whole staff of kids with particular responsibilities to the store," said Harrigan.
If your business is interested in working with students at Grafton High School's Business and Computer Science department, contact Neil Harrigan at harrigann@grafton.k12.ma.us or Tammy D'Amato at damatot@grafton.k12.ma.us
Our schools and all involved do a great job for the students, like the article depicts. Unfortunately, this year due to the trioka of: teacher salary increases, opening the new high school and adding all day kindergarten in the same fiscal year, has basically busted the school's budget.
I think the once discussed then dismissed school operational override vote is once more in discussion, or significant cuts and additional student activity fees will needed.
Obviously, any choice the school committee makes will be "difficult".