Open to students who are or are about to turn 16, the Apprenticeship/Career Track will jumpstart your student's career and gain your student a two-year head start in the workplace. An exciting alternative to the standard college track, this one-year program recognizes that today's student needs to be as educated to enter the workforce as to enter college. Based on the traditional and time-honored apprenticeship approach to job training, this program provides your student with invaluable work experience and on-the-job learning. Extensive aptitude testing and career guidance assist your student in identifying suitable career and job choices. The program allows your student to enter an appropriate work­place apprenticeship and carefully monitors your student's progress throughout the year. The apprenticeship Is combined with practical classroom learning that equips your student for success in life. A primary aim of the program is to prepare your student to graduate with the General Equivalency Diploma on turning 17. Just as important, the program will teach your student a wide range of essential job and life skills. With one foot planted firmly in the workplace, your student will recognize the importance and value of classroom learning and how these skills and information are critical to your students daily life. The Apprenticeship/Career Track program equips your  student at age 17 to enter the workforce full time or even to enter college or other post-secondary education. The Apprenticeship/Career Track program is designed to produce confident and responsible adults, with the self-awareness, life and job skills, work experience, and diploma needed to jumpstart a career and begin a successful, independent life.

Workplace apprenticeship

Work place apprenticeship is the foundation of the Apprenticeship/career Track program. Apprenticeship can be traced back 4,000 years to the reign of the Babylonian king Hammurabi. For most of history, apprenticeship was the only kind of education available to most youth. Jesus himself was apprenticed to his father Joseph to learn the craft of carpentry. Derived from a word meaning "to learn," apprenticeship was—and still is today—an education that can lead to a secure and successful life. Placement in an apprenticeship begins with extensive aptitude and occupational testing of your student. Your student then undergoes in-depth career and job guidance counseling that utilizes both the test results and knowledge of real-world employment opportunities. Working closely with your student, the counselor recommends a suitable career and job direction for your student and assists in an apprenticeship placement. Apprenticeship in the Apprenticeship/Career Track is a monitored program that provides monthly evaluations of your student's workplace performance and learning. Program faculty, closely monitor student performance on the job and provide your student with the feedback necessary to improve and excel in the apprenticeship. By entering into an apprenticeship as part of the Apprenticeship/Career Track, your student is able to participate in the adult world of work while continuing to receive the education needed to succeed in life.

Graduate at 17 with a diploma

Upon completion of the one-year Apprenticeship/ Career Track program at 17, your student is ready to graduate from school and to enter the work­place full time or attend college or technical school. Open to students who are or are about to turn 16, this program provides your student with a one-year workplace apprenticeship, classroom prep for the General Equivalency Diploma, and extensive life and job skills training. Students can earn their way through the program. At parental discretion, your student actually can pay his own way through the Apprenticeship/Career Track program with the hourly wages earned during the apprenticeship. Your student can experience the pride of working his/her way through the Apprenticeship/Career Track program and contributing to his/her future success. Relating the time spent at work with the cost of the program can help your student recognize the value of both an hour's work and a dollar. By applying his/her wages to the program's tuition costs, your student can earn his/her way to independence and still have money left to pay for transportation expenses for travel to and from school and the apprenticeship workplace.

Aptitude testing & career guidance

Upon enrolling in the Apprenticeship/Career Track program, your student will take a series of sophisticated vocational aptitude tests. These tests and personal interviews with your student will help the guidance counselor identify your student's skills and strengths as well as occupational interests. The counselor will assist your student in matching aptitudes and interests with actual opportunities in the job market. Using this process, the counselor will work with your student to advise an appropriate apprenticeship placement.

Workplace & classroom learning

Students who expect to succeed in today's economy have to be educated for success, whether entering the workforce or entering college. The Apprenticeship/Career Track program recognizes that some knowledge simply cannot be taught in the classroom. In the apprentice­ship, your student receives invaluable on-the-job training in work-related skills while learning what it takes to succeed in the workplace. In the classroom, your student learns practical life and job skills that directly relate to the workplace experience of the apprenticeship. By incorporating both workplace and classroom learning, this program emphasizes the real-world importance of education and learning. For the student in this program, learning no longer takes place in a vacuum without an apparent connection to your students life. FCA/Employer apprentice relationship provides for special work exemptions and lifting of certain state restrictions.

Our core apprentice educational program is the American Hotel Restaurant Associations S.T.A.R.T. training curriculum for high school.

General Equivalency Diploma (GED) prep classes

As the key to early graduation at 17, the Apprenticeship/ Career Track program provides comprehensive classroom preparation and study materials to equip your student to earn a General Equivalency Diploma. The GED not only allows for your student to graduate early and enter the workforce, but also qualifies your student to attend college.

Life-Prep classes

The Apprenticeship/Career Track provides a broad range of training classes in practical life and job skills to prepare your student for the work­place and for life. These classes are chosen carefully to develop the whole person as your student transitions from youth to adulthood.