A half century of hands-on learning at Whittier Tech

HAVERHILL — It’s 7:45 a.m., a Tuesday in this the 50th anniversary of Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School.

Principal Chris Laganas’ booming voice reaches through the intercom to 1,275 students in their homerooms this morning two days before Thanksgiving; and two months before voters would defeat a plan to build a $446 million school.

The students are from the 11 towns and cities in which 73% of special election voters would reject the new school proposal, deeming it too costly, and almost three months before the Whittier Tech School Committee voted recently to withdraw the proposal.

The students are enrolled in any of 23 vocational-technical shops. From culinary arts to computer-aided design, HVAC to hospitality and marketing to masonry.

The principal’s underlying message this morning in late November is the same as it will be in late May. The same as on a Monday or Friday.

Since Whittier opened in the 1973-74 school year, its students have gone on to be machinists, mechanics, electricians, chefs, carpenters, plumbers, nurses, teachers, researchers and businesspeople and to work in all fields.

In the coming weeks, freshmen will select the shop program they want to pursue and juniors will become eligible for the Whittier cooperative education program in which students alternate school work with paid employment in their chosen technical field.

Invariably, Whittier grads become handy people.

The message Laganas relays this morning, and the words from his predecessors, is this:

Take the opportunity in hand and work it.

Make it and shape it in these classrooms and shops, and out in the field on coop placements working for employers, says Laganas, also the assistant superintendent, and a former professional hockey player who skated in hundreds of minor league games.

The Whittier Way is active, a learning-by-doing approach that has driven the Whittier Tech engine for 50 years.

Mixing things up

In a kitchen the size of a basketball court, overhead lighting glints off stainless steel counters, mixers and dishwashing machines.

Voices roll up against rattling dishes and chiming silverware. Pots tumble into a deep sink, thumping like a kick drum.

Two dozen culinary arts students in aprons and instructors in chef coats and hats transition from breakfast to lunch.

A chef calls out a reminder for students to stay on schedule with their tasks. This is crucial when shifting from one meal to the next.

In the baking section, a youth pours chocolate chips into a mixer filled with cookie dough.

Behind him, a student pulls a baking sheet of fresh cookies from the oven and slides it on a rack to cool.

The smell of warm chocolate chip cookies registers bliss.

The difference at Whittier is students get to make, bake, serve and — yes — eat the cookies.

Culinary student Jeramiahes Vega, a junior who lives in Haverhill, pushes a cart to the baking station.

Cooking gives him pleasure, satisfies.

“I like the people’s reactions after they eat the food I make,” he said. “I like that. I like seeing how they change after having good food.”

Nearby, Lillian Lefcourt, a Haverhill senior clad in kitchen whites, scrapes her grill clean. She pokes a brush into a small stainless container with melted butter. She works with purpose. No wasted movement.

She and a classmate have been making grab-and-go breakfast sandwiches — egg and bacon or sausage and cheese — for the teachers.

Lefcourt came to Whittier to learn a trade, to earn a living.

“I really like baking cookies and brownies,” she says, brushing butter on the grill.

Students cut, measure and clean.

Chefs supervise, calling out orders as needed.

“Guiding the students,” chef Tjitse Boringa says. “The students are doing all the work.”

Boringa, originally from the Netherlands, has been teaching here for 23 years.

He is one of six culinary arts instructors.

The hallmark here and in the school’s 22 other programs is active learning.

Beginning with the basics and building skills, not the least of which are being punctual, being attentive and finding the pleasure we humans get from learning.

More students are continuing their education these days, Boringa says.

A lot of them go to Johnson & Wales University or the Culinary Institute of America or Northern Essex Community College, he says.

Mouths and manes

In the dental shop, Skyy Skinner, a sophomore from Haverhill, practices passing instruments to her partner. Precision in simple tasks are important.

Skinner holds an explorer, a thin stainless steel object for probing. She is poised above a set of teeth. No face or head. Just teeth on a thin post.

She is also learning about disease control, making sure she is gloved and surfaces are clean, that the objects are sterilized and the space disinfected.

Good dental hygiene promotes good health, she says.

“It is important for a lot of things you wouldn’t expect,” Skinner says.

She and the seven or eight other dental assistant students in the room all say they want to work in the dentistry field.

This program was added in 2018. There is a demand for dental hygienists and assistants. The same is true for the budding carpenters, electricians and other tradespeople here.

Some students arrive to Whittier with a program in mind; others find theirs through the freshmen exploratory. For three-quarters of their first year, they cycle through the different shops learning about the skills and technologies before selecting one to pursue in depth over their remaining time at the school.

The cosmetology program has 19 students. Once they are licensed, they are placed in a salon outside the school for their co-op assignment, instructor Nancy Calverley says.

Here in the cosmetology salon, students are coloring and styling hair and applying gel polish to nails.

Shaylee Twombly, a senior from Amesbury, is first bleaching her client’s hair tips and front pieces so she can apply a red color and give it a halo look.

“As you can see, it is kind of lifting down here,” she says of the color, as it shifts from a natural brown color to a lighter blond.

“I was just bored with my hair,” says the client, a fellow student, Julianna Bucknill, of Newbury.

The students are an energetic group and interested in beauty and fashion.

“We are all bubbly with each other,” says Twombly, who plans to go to a two-year college and someday open her own salon.

Shaping and selling

A majority of Whittier graduates continue their education. Some will start their own businesses.

A number of the teachers here are former Whittier students.

In the wood shop is instructor Mike Sandlin, who grew up in Haverhill. He graduated from Whittier in 1997, studying carpentry, and graduated from Westfield State University with a degree in regional planning.

He then joined the carpenters union and worked in the carpentry field for 18 years before returning to teach at his old school.

Sometimes it takes students a few years to figure what they want to do, but many of them “are crushing it,” Sandlin says.

A former student came in the other day and told him how she had started out with a company on the bottom rung.

She was pushing a broom around a shop.

“And now has worked her way up and is drawing her own kitchens and coming up with her own cabinet plans,” Sandlin says.

The wood shop is filled with lumber and tools and machines, including shapers, routers, sanders, planers, joiners, saws and lathes.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the building, students decorate the school store, called J. Greenleaf, draping garlands behind the checkout counter.

Sophomore Lia Landan, a marketing student from Haverhill, adjusts a garland according to directions from fellow marketing student Michael Wells, a junior from Haverhill, who eyes the placement from the entrance.

Next, they string lights around the greenery and play Christmas music.

“We have a little tree over there,” Landan says.

“We have a star up there,” another student says, pointing to a yellow star topping the garland.

The right fit

Across the hall from the store is the Poet’s Inn, a cozy eatery open to the public.

Seated at a table are senior class president Owen Brannelly, from Amesbury, and hospitality program teacher Nikolas Kedian, who graduated from Whittier Tech in 2016.

“I realized the second I stepped into the culinary shop, it was the place where I best fit in,” Kedian says. “You start eating the food, meeting the people.”

It felt like home. His family has worked in restaurants, he says.

Footsteps, lots of them, approach in the hallway.

More than 250 JG Whittier Middle School students are visiting Whittier Tech this day.

Every Tuesday in November and a little of December, middle school students from the 11 sending communities visit the vocational school.

Brannelly says it feels like it was only last year that he was an Amesbury Middle School student visiting Whittier. He was excited and nervous, and imagines that is what these middle schoolers are feeling.

He had not planned on going the vocational route but decided that he wanted to try something new and different.

He has been the class president for three years.

He and classmates have organized school dances, including the first homecoming dance in the last 20 years.

The dances have drawn lots of students, almost 800 of them to the last dance.

He is interning at ARCH Medical Solutions, a manufacturing company in Seabrook, New Hampshire.

Last year, he worked for an accounting firm as a receptionist.

He is also earning college credits, taking classes, including English composition, at Whittier through Northern Essex Community College.

He wants to study marketing in college and has been accepted by Big Ten schools: the University of Minnesota, Michigan State University and Ohio State University.

He is bound for a much larger world, and ready for his next new and different adventure, well prepared for it by the Whittier Way.

Whittier by the numbers

Opened: 1973

Address: 115 Amesbury Line Road, Haverhill

Enrollment: 1,277 students

Student-teacher ratio: 10-1

Mascot: Wildcat

Colors: Maroon and gold

Sending cities and towns: Haverhill, Amesbury, Newburyport, Georgetown, Groveland, Ipswich, Merrimac, Newbury, Rowley, Salisbury and West Newbury.

Programs: 23 in six core areas, arts and communication, construction, manufacturing, service, technology, and transportation

Sports: 10 boys teams and nine girls teams

2023 grads to college: 56%

2023 grads to work: 37%