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CareerExplorationConfused about which New York school to attend? Interested in paramedics, secretarial, or plumbing, but unsure as to how to proceed? In need of financial aid for college? Just plain unsure of your educational or career future? Drop by the Career Center at PRY and a very friendly counselor will give you time, information and a place to discover some answers.The Career Center opened in thespring of 1974. It evolved as a response to a clear educational and counseling need. Young people who had been active in PRY for years were now in junior and senior high school. With staggering ratios of guidance counselors to students in the public schools (1:950 in a local high school), and with the numerous and confusing options given to a secondary education student, trusting human contact with a career counselor are at a great deficiency. With funding through CYDS, PRY hired Jack Uhrich, its present Director, and an assistant director and the Center became a reality.The program provides a variety of services, including: One-to-one counseling, free vocational and interest testing, career clubs, a drop-in center, information and referral, drama opportunities, trips and speakers, small group high school exposure in local junior high schools, employment and values development in the summer, and a place to just be. It's become a second home to many, a place to slowly unravel some of the bruises and fears that youth have about living and the handicaps that partially block visions for a future. The Center serves primarily secondary education level youth, but also assists those in college and well beyond.The Center has and does work actively with area schools. The staff assists JHS 51 in orienting 8th and 9th grade students to the variety of high school options. Speakers, programs and a career information table outside the guidance office are ways that PRY has worked cooperatively with John Jay High School. Each year several high school students are assisted in changing schools and curriculums, often going to a specializedschool more appropriate to the student%u2019s needs and interests. Professional linkages have been made with several colleges in the metropolitan area and state, especially those with scholarship and special remedial programs for students with unique needs.A clear educational and counseling philosophy that propels the Center is a belief that youth will most greatly benefit from services that come from staff members that are personal and become trustworthy. Information and advice is accepted and acted upon most readily when the source is reliable. The Center also conveys its overall interest in youth and in getting to know them by providing a variety of programs in addition to the direct educational services. They include a girl%u2019s softball team, drama classes, clubs, the drop-in Center where youth can play pingpong, board games, pool or just hang out. People get to know and care for each other in this manner. Since the Center has become a kind of home for many and in light of its various services, it has credibility for youth. Some of the youth have been shuffled from one agency to another impersonal agency. A real mark of Jack, Mae Jackson, his assistant and their student staff is their humanness.In the summer the Career staff the various program directors provides input for the development of the forty-plus high school, college and graduate students who work in PRY. Career development includes such important work values as punctuality, attitude, relationship to clients and peers, completion of job description, initiative. And so Jack and Mae are hard at work in supporting the, Directors as they supervise these students and nourish these skills. Those who have a summer job at PRY do not have it easy. But the result is growth, increased self confidence and, dare we say, increased marketability as future employees elsewhere.W hat%u2019s in the future? Increased involvement with the schools? Expanded counseling loads? Greater youth participation in program development? It%u2019s not clear. But one thing is: TTie involvement will be personal. It will be greatly defined by the clear needs of the youth. And the action will be centered at 421-7th Street, Brooklyn.CreativeL e a rn in gCenterFew and far between are those that assert that learning can truly be fun. Yet that would be one%u2019s impression after spending time at the PRY Creative Learning Center. The program is primarily an after-school project for elementary school youth. And the children come charging over to the Center four days per week, directly from their public school classrooms. Something must be attractive to keeping them coming from one place of learning...to another.The design of the Center is the unique expression of Bonnie Nuzum and her dedicated staff. An outside observer would witness the following if he/she watched from a comer: About 2:00 staff persons are found setting up learning center areas%u2014arts and crafts supplies, writing out recipes and instructions sheets, arranging dry cells and batteries for a science class. Shortly after 3:00 pm twenty to thirty children arrive. Neatly they hang up their coats and scarfs, and closely examine a direction chart which lists the classes they have already opted for earlier in the week. Then they go quickly to their learning lab%u2014which might be a drama group, cooking area, a poetry and writing class, a crafts unit or a science group. Working with five to six other children, and with a training, often professional teacher, the youth are engaged for 45 minutes or so. Mary Cope, the coordinator for the learning Labs, checks the groups, filling the gaps, securing needed supplies. Then Bonnie calls everyone to gather for a group session. The children present their own unit or project, reading the instructions or recipes, describing the work, often to receive applause and cheers from their learning mates. By this time another twenty or so college students and community adults > have arrived. The children are then assisted one-to-one in areas of remedial reading, math, and comprehension.%u201c The model is quite effective,%u201d states Ms. Nuzum. %u201c The children enjoy coming. In fact we have a long waiting list. Well, not that long, for I have a hard timesaving no to an eager child or parent.%u2019 %u2019As with most PRY programs, much of its strength and potential has been realized as a result of a combined community effort, coordinated by the Creative Learning Center Staff. Donna Saylor, Assistant Director is the liaison for students from Wagner College who have been aiding the PRY program since its inception in 1968. Between fifteen and twenty students assist each semester as tutors. Brooklyn College also participates through its School of Education, which* enables another twenty secondary education students to participate in this community based education project. The Park Slope United Methodist Church, at 6th Avenue and 8th Street, is the site for the program. It%u2019s geographically perfect, across the street from the main %u201cfeeder%u201d %u2018 school P.S. 39, and adjacent to the Prospect Park library. Graduate students from such institutions as Union Theological Seminary and the College for Human Seminary and the College for Human Services have also participated as teacher and tutors. District 15, The Board of Education and local public schools have been quite supportive of the project. Two public schools work cooperatively with PRY in a parent tutoring project, which occurs in the school. The parents are supervised by PRY staff.The future of the program is really.... unlimited. The need for creative and alternative forms of education is great. Professors at Brooklyn College and evaluators from the New York City Youth Board have suggested that PRY expand as a demonstrative project for other community based remedial education programs in the city.More importantly though, hopefully it will continue in the deepest of its tradition, as a place where children will congregation with an excitement to learn, discover...and even to come to know that reading %u2019riting AND %u2019rithmetic can be really fun.n%u2014 - 40