Graduating senior Cole Hanks is a full time ITS technician at Thompson School District.
Cole started his career as a member of the Career Wise program at TSD.
So the Career Wise Program is an apprenticeship program
that lasts for three years.
You work up to a total of 20
to 24 hours per week, and then you also get paid for it.
And then you learn on the job training skills
and you also can get certifications like, for example, I'm working towards
getting the A+ certification, which is required in the field that I'm going into.
Like when I first saw the Chromebooks back in elementary school,
when we first got them, I wondered, you know what, how do they manage these?
How do they set these devices up
so they can control what settings users can and cannot change?
And do all of that remotely?
From there,
I've gone on to the student tech Help Desk here at Berthoud High School.
I have started at the summer internship program and I really fell in love with it
at that point.
So then I asked our wonderful client services manager, Andy Larkins,
what are some other options that I can do
to continue doing this during the school year?
And he said, okay, let's do the apprenticeship program.
And I agreed and I applied for it and then I got the job
and then I've enjoyed it ever since.
Prior to joining the program, all I really knew was how to operate
a computer on the basics, just like read emails, do
schoolwork, complete that kind of stuff.
So some of the skills that I've learned in this program was how to do basic
computer troubleshooting like clients can't print
or they can't check their email or the device can't connect to the Internet.
And then also more moderate skills like needing to reimage their computers
or having to un-add them and re-add them to the domain
when they're not working right or applying critical updates.
In addition, I've also learned how to repair Chromebooks,
sometimes iPads, and then I've also learned
how to install things such as TVs, work on PC sticks that run the TV systems.
And I've also learned a lot about networking
from our wonderful network engineers.
So after this apprenticeship, I'm planning on becoming a full time
technician, level one, and then soon to be level two
and then I'm also planning on going on to CSU Global,
which is Colorado State University, their global campus,
which is a completely online college for a degree in cybersecurity.
So for advice that I would give to new approaching apprentices would be to always
jump in and help out, ask what others are doing.
If you work in the client services division as an apprentice,
and if you're interested in the infrastructure,
like the management of servers or networks,
make sure to ask our network engineers and our systems technicians.
They’ll gladly show you what they're doing and how all of our infrastructure works
in order to keep the Thompson School District running.