Interview with Emily Behm and Jan Bailey
At the Lyons High school, is Jan Bailey Emily Behm. These joyous ladies are the secretaries in the main office of the school. Every summer the school has a worker from the workforce program who comes to the high school and helps out around the office. This summer worker performs tasks such as; copying, filling, mailing, cleaning and resetting lockers, and other odd jobs.
While sitting with Jan and Emily, I asked them how they would rate their satisfaction, on a scale of one to ten, with having a workforce worker here. “I would say definite nine and a half,” says Jan Bailey with a very pleased smile, as Emily nodded in agreement. They said that a benefit from having the workers here would be to get to know one of the students from the school on a more personally level. You get to have a more personal relationship with the student while they are here for the school years. They feel like they have a better connection with the student body. Not only have they benefitted by getting to know the people who work with them there, but they said they are always a great help around the office for them. “It takes a lot of work off of our shoulders.”
Jan says that they try to teach the workers things that they would use in any job on a daily basis. Things like being initiative- doing work on their own on top of what is being told, getting along with others, and “not to gripe if you get a job that you dislike.”
Another comment that these ladies would like to add is that they enjoy having the same worker for multiple years in a row like they have because they don’t have to retrain the person- they already know what they need to do. They say that overall they are very satisfied with all the workers they had in the past and always look forward to having a worker back the next summer.