Thursday, March 23, 2023
If there’s one thing Winneconne High School alum Jack Stanek and his former teachers would agree on, it’s that when Jack reached sixth grade, he was a wild child. “I spent more recesses in detention,” admits Jack. Today, he works as a welder for Innovative Machining, Neenah, WI. He lives in the home he bought last year at the age of 20 and is every bit the model citizen. What brought on this transformation?
In part, Jack got to know himself. In sixth grade, “I started to get bored. In a lot of classes, I started to have too much time on my hands,” he says, “I started getting into a lot of trouble.”
In fact, he recognized a pattern: “This is going to sound really, really weird,” he says. “But every time I set a goal, I'd finish a goal, I'd get bored, and then I’d get in trouble.”
Luckily, Jack was surrounded by wise and patient adults. A group of them sat him down and guided him toward defining his purpose, his “why.” For example, as the adults explained to him, if you want to be a healthier person, your goal is not to lift 300 pounds at a bench press; your goal is to stay healthy so you can roll around on the floor with your grandkids one day. “I needed something that would keep me busy and would be endless,” says Jack.
As he continued through middle school, he took classes in technology and agriculture, but when he got to the high school STEAM curriculum, that was it. According to his former tech ed teacher Chris Arps, once he was able to see what the world has to offer and the skill sets needed, “I think that's what lit his fire. … I think he took every single tech class that we offer here. … He loved the challenge.”
“[Mr. Arps] knew if I was bored, I was out of there,” says Jack. “I really got good at [welding]. I did a lot of stuff that other students couldn't. And then when I started teaching other students what I was doing, … I was realizing how much time and ideas and devotion I had to it and there was no end to it. There is never too much knowledge and I love that. I love that there's never a stop with any form of welding and then I could teach that. And that just made it even better teaching.”
“I would say grades are irrelevant to him. It's more about the knowledge,” Mr. Arps continues. “[He’s thinking more] what am I going to get out of the class? And how does it relate to the real world?”
Jack continued to pursue all the elements of a career pathway: In addition to his CTE courses, he earned industry-recognized credentials, dual credit, was an officer for his SkillsUSA chapter, and was a youth apprentice his senior year (2020) at a company that hired him as a fabricator after he graduated. He distinguished himself by working with some welding inspectors to do a vertical down structural test—a task thought to be nearly impossible. As a result, the American Welding Society is going to be changing some rules.
Jack’s take on it: “I did some cool stuff, yes. But I think the more impressive thing was me growing as a person. And that's not going to stop.”