Webcor Carpentry Foremen Teach Oakland CTE Students at Skilled Trades Day

Last month, 300+ high school students from Oakland Unified School District’s (OUSD’s) Career Technical Education (CTE) Building & Construction Trades program packed Cypress Mandela Training Center for the district’s Skilled Trades Day.

• Typically held twice a year, the day-long event immerses CTE students in hands-on learning opportunities guided by skilled craft professionals who volunteer their time as mentors.
  

For many students, it’s their first exposure to the world of skilled labor—a career path that’s often dismissed or flat-out ignored by high school teachers, counselors, and curricula.

“Interacting with our future workforce and exposing them to our industry is not only an amazing experience, but a crucial responsibility,” says Outreach and Partnerships Manager Sharla Sullivan. “We need these students to join our workforce and eventually lead our industry!”

That day, Webcor Carpentry Foremen Pablo Contreras and Nermin Masic joined Sharla at the world-class training center to connect with students and introduce them to carpentry basics. After listening to Nermin and Pablo give a safety talk and explain how to approach their assigned tasks, the students went to work on a small piece of poplar wood—routing the edges, sanding edges with sanding paper, and drilling holes into the material so they could apply small button plugs into the holes.

• “It was great to see the students so interested in the trades, as well as to see so many trades in one place,” Nermin says. “I really enjoyed the entire experience.”

Afterward, Sharla dove into the many career paths available in the construction trades. She emphasized Cypress Mandela’s California Building and Construction Trades Council-approved multi-craft curriculum (MC3) pre-apprenticeship program in the students’ own backyard—the perfect place for local youth to launch long-term careers in the building trades.

“Thank you to Webcor Carpentry for supporting these important workforce development efforts,” Sharla says. “And thank you to our partners at OUSD for continuing to embody Construction Inclusion Week’s 2025 theme of opening doors to expand opportunities in our industry!”

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