Pittsburgh-Area High School Student Excels in Trade Skills
April 12, 2013
Celebrated poet Maya Angelou once said, “Living a life is like constructing a building; if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.”
In January, Braga, who attends Steel Center Area Vocational School in Jefferson Hills, won a regional residential wiring competition sponsored by SkillsUSA, a Leesburg, Va.-based nonprofit. She was profiled as the Pittsburgh Tribune’s Young Achiever in March.. After winning the regional contest against eight male students, she went on to place eighth in a Pennsylvania statewide competition in April. Braga, who plans to take classes at the University of Pittsburgh while she completes her apprenticeship with Pittsburgh Local 5, is a study in focus and determination, says her instructor and mentor Bob Eagleson. A journeyman member of Washington, D.C. Local 26 who later transferred to an IBEW manufacturing local at a Pittsburgh Westinghouse plant, Eagleson began teaching in 2000. He says:
Before she transferred to Steel Center in her sophomore year, Braga attended a high school where the majority of her peers prepared to enroll in college. Now a junior, Braga says:
While her father thought attending vocational-technical school might be a mistake, she says, her mother was supportive as long as her grades stayed high. She says, of winning the Allegheny County SkillsUSA contest:
Braga, who serves as an officer of her class at Steel Center, would be the first of her family to be a member of a union. She is facing her career choice with eyes open. Last November, she submitted a paper to Eagleson entitled, “Women in Construction: Will it Ever Be Safe?” She discussed the challenges facing women in obtaining properly-fitting work clothes, tools and equipment. And she reviewed literature that starkly discussed how many women in the trades have met with harassment from male workers on the job. In the paper, Braga wrote, “Overcoming a lack in fitting tools or safety equipment, and many forms of harassment on the job site is a lot to pay to do the job one loves. Is it not?” Describing her career choice, Braga, who visits Pittsburgh Local 5’s apprenticeship training center monthly as part of the Explorer program, told the Pittsburgh Tribune:
Eagleson says Braga is different from many students who don’t want to work for an answer or a solution to a problem and ask him to give them answers. “She’s willing to go to the electrical code or other places and look things up,” says Eagleson, who adds, “The reward from my job is the satisfaction of having students who are successfully living in the same towns they grew up in come back and say ‘Thank you.’ I think Michelle will be one of those students.”
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