Polytechnic welcomes first out-of-province contingent to Jill of all Trades
On a mild November morning, just before the weather would chill to temperatures she left behind in Yellowknife the day before, 13-year-old Megan Macintyre sits in the NAIT gymnasium, energized and glowing.
The room is packed with young women her age, all in bright orange t-shirts. Some are experimenting with half-a-dozen trades disciplines: building robotic figures from pipes, trying miniature car-painting sprayers, operating a video game style crane simulator, and more. Others visit tables staffed by local company and industry reps eager to chat and share swag.
“I love how many people are here,” says Macintyre.
“I love that other kids are getting the chance to look into this.”
By “this,” she means Jill of all Trades (JOAT), an event created by Ontario’s Conestoga College and now in its fourth year at NAIT.
Each iteration has improved upon the last, introducing a rising number of young women to the possibility of a career in the skilled trades, where they’re still vastly underrepresented across Canada.
This year, NAIT is hosting 200 students from 25 schools, making it the polytechnic’s largest staging of JOAT yet.
Never before, however, have attendees come from as far away as the Northwest Territories – marking a milestone for the event and, possibly, pointing the way forward for Macintyre and six of her colleagues from École St. Patrick High School.
Learn more about Jill of all Trades at NAIT
Pathways, not barriers
The young women have come to NAIT to build upon what they’d started in Yellowknife.
Across the road from St. Patrick, a grade 8 to 12 school of about 550 not far from the shore of Great Slave Lake, is the Kimberlite Career and Technical Centre. It teaches a small range of trades, from hairstyling to construction technology.
It’s also a big part of the reason St. Patrick assistant principal Cindy Kimove worked to send the contingent from Yellowknife to Edmonton.
Seeing Kimberlite mostly full of male students, Kimove wondered: “How do we create a more equitable space [there] so that we have a more diverse group of students accessing these programs?”
She began checking in with groups such as Women Building Futures, a non-profit that supports women and gender-diverse individuals looking to enter the skilled trades. Those led Kimove to discover JOAT.
Initially unsure how her students would participate, she emulated the concept by creating “Skill Sisters.” The club of seven or eight students, depending on the day, spends occasional hours across the road.
“I want them to see that there's pathways, not barriers.”
They started out just by meeting instructors and working on skills as simple as successfully pull-starting small engines – which the girls would celebrate in an eruption of hugs and high-fives.
“I want them to see that there's pathways, not barriers,” says Kimove.
The young womens’ enthusiasm kept her motivated to find a way to attend the event at NAIT, where more than a dozen trades would be on display, a much greater exposure to skills and opportunities than St. Patrick could offer.
As part of the effort, Kimove posted about the students’ activities and goals on social media. One day, the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) popped up in the school’s DMs. Soon after, SCWIST was including the Skills Sisters in programs to encourage female participation in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math.
What’s more, it was offering to immediately fund a trip south that Kimove had thought was years away.
A vision of equality
Jen Maldonado, JOAT lead organizer, hopes that the trip “gives students an experience where they can potentially see an amazing career path for themselves in the future.”
That’s especially important for female students. The latest data shows that men make up more than 92% of workers in “trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations.”
That doesn’t align with Tessa Nendsa’s vision of equality. “Everyone deserves the opportunity to learn to do something they love,” says the 15-year old Grade 10 student from St. Patrick.
Nendsa (above right) believes her top marks in math and science could serve her well in pursuing metalwork of some kind.
(Later that day, she’d beam at a steel cat that she was able to make in a welding workshop.)
“Trades can be for everyone,” she says.
Mcintyre (above left) agrees. “I think it’s really cool that they’re making an opportunity for women,” she says of JOAT.
While Mcintyre still isn’t sure exactly what path she wants to follow, she may have more to choose from than she’d previously thought. “It would be really cool to study here,” she says, glancing around the gym.
For Kimove, that inkling of a broader future – no matter what it may hold – may be enough for the time being.
The way she sees it, one purpose of education is to ensure that “all kids … realize that they are capable.”
That means “being able to identify your strengths, gifts and talents, and what you bring to the world,” Kimove adds.
“And I think that the more opportunities we can give kids to find out what their strengths, gifts and talents are, the better that will be for society.”