Charles City High School CAPS class associates get ‘penned’

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

If a nattily dressed young person from Charles City High School comes straight up to you, looks you in the eye while giving you a firm handshake and introduces herself or himself clearly and confidently, you may have just met a member of the school CAPS program.

The high school’s first CAPS class held a ceremony at Zoetis in Charles City last Friday with invited city officials, school administrators, members of the Board of Education and others, to recognize that six class members had completed a significant part of the course and were ready to move on to the next step.

CAPS class members honored are Clayton Wright, Gabe Rogstad, Nora Hruska, Claire Girkin, Kaden Buseman and Jack Hanson. They are all juniors, except for Kruska, who is a senior.

Amy Baker, the director of Cedar Valley CAPS –  which includes six other high schools or high school pairs in addition to its newest member, Charles City – said that in the military, when members make significant advancements they are recognized with a pinning ceremony.

Borrowing from that tradition, the CCHS CAPS program held a “penning ceremony,” where members received pens to recognize that they have shown leadership capabilities, commitment, readiness, professionalism and were ready to take the next step, “to become a true CAPS associate,” Baker said.

Charles City High School business teacher Tammy Wheeler had first introduced the CAPS concept locally to a room full of business people and others at a luncheon last February. The program, which stands for Center for Advanced Professional Study, is a way to help students develop skills that the traditional classroom experience doesn’t address, she said.

“What it is is a partnership between education, businesses, organizations and it takes students out of the classroom and integrates them fully into real world projects with people like you, the Charles City community and businesses in the community,” Wheeler had told that group.

At the ceremony Friday, Wheeler said the class had finished its “onboarding” – a business term for integrating new people into an organization – which included learning how to dress professionally, how to write a professional email, meeting and greeting people in a professional atmosphere, perfecting “30-second elevator pitches,” and more.

The onboarding also included a design sprint in Cedar Falls, where a problem was thrown at them, they came up with potential solutions, then pitched their ideas to a panel of business professionals; leadership training, which was provided by the University of Northern Iowa and tested how they worked together and who were the leaders and who were the followers; and finally the scrum training.

“The scrum training is like an agile framework,” Wheeler said, using another business term.

“That’s just basically project management, a way to train them how to manage a project from start to finish,” she said. “We had someone from Zoetis come along with us to see that training, because we’d like to have that training here at some point.”

Zoetis became involved in the local CAPS program after the lunch meeting last February, where Wheeler said the program was looking for a host site.

“They have been nothing but wonderful to us,” she said. “They give us this space. They allow us to use the auditorium. We all have badges to scan in. They had some of their leadership team come in and do some things with us. … Zoetis has been just a godsend to this program. They have been amazing to us.”

Beginning with that February luncheon, Wheeler has been soliciting ideas from businesses for projects that the students can tackle – real problems that the students can solve that will really benefit the business, while the student also develops skills and confidence.

She said 46 or 47 projects from area businesses and organizations have been identified and put on an electronic board where students can access them and pick the ones they want to work on. Some businesses have several projects on the board.

“With CAPS being in its very first year at Charles City and to have that many projects on our project board is amazing,” Wheeler said. “I have access to other Cedar Valley CAPS programs, that have been doing this for two or three years, and we have as many projects as they have. It’s pretty cool to have that opportunity to work with the Charles City community and the businesses.”

At the ceremony Friday, the students gave short talks introducing themselves, explaining why they got involved in CAPS, which projects they intend to begin working on and what they are getting out of the program. Several mentioned the hands-on approach to problem-solving and becoming more confident and experienced in public speaking as accomplishments.

“We really want CAPS to be different from school,” Wheeler said. Instead of teaching the whole class the same thing, CAPS is, “No, get out of the box. Go learn what you want to learn, do what projects you want to do.”

Typically, the CAPS “associates” will take the course for one semester, although they can take it additional semesters if they desire, Wheeler said. Students are usually paired into teams to tackle the projects, and they’ll usually accomplish one or two per semester.