While many students spend summer vacationing and basking in the sun, others choose to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Texas High school seniors Kevin Avila and Markus Hall took their summer jobs to the next level by working with a local construction company, and played key roles in building the two new CTE buildings on their very own campus.
“I applied for the internship of electrician at the school,” senior Kevin Avila said. “I didn’t get selected, but Jason Green decided to recommend me to Reliance, which I appreciate a lot and it was a big opportunity for me.”
Coaches played a crucial role in guiding these students to start their careers early on in life, and inspire them to work hard.
“I got involved with this company through the job CO inside the lunch room, “ Hall said. “My football coach recommended that I talk to the manager and the hiring assistants. When I did, they gave me an application for the job.”
The school also played a role in these students’ success by providing them with on campus prep and readiness for their future careers. The companies don’t just consider these students as volunteers, but instead actual employees due to the program.
“I’m considered an employee because I will be doing career prep,” Avila said. “Right now, it’s called Summer Help, but soon I’ll be starting career prep where I will be coming to school half the day and going to work the other half.”
Despite being a teenager, they still endure the same struggles as the other adult construction workers on a daily basis.
“[I wake] up at about 4:30 [AM], take a good shower, then get to work early,” senior Markus Hall said. “At about 5:50, we start working, and after that we get only 30 minutes of [breaktime], then another four hours of work.”
Even at this young age,Hall and Avila are still required to put in the effort while working through tough conditions inside and outside of the buildings, just like everyone else.
“You get in tight places in this heat [often],” Avila said. “You [also] have to be up high on the ladder, depending on where you’re at. Sometimes you have to be on the roof, then sometimes you have to be in closed spaces where the pipes are all around you. You can even get injured sometimes, but it isn’t anything really bad.”
No matter how hard this work can get, Hall and Avila still manage to find balance within their work through past experiences at other jobs, and these experiences help navigate them through their future.
“This job made me think about doing HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) and learn more [about working with] copper because this is a good career,” Hall said. “Most people work at food chains, and I did that a couple of times and worked at Bubba’s 33, but I decided to elevate and do something more hands-on.”
