An 11-year-old girl got the chance to do a trade she never thought she'd get her hands on: Welding.
At Pinellas Technical College in Clearwater, a welder demonstrated his craft to a crew of middle school girls.
"And in this hand, I have this trigger here. That's how I send the oxygen through and get it to cut real nice," he said.
And when the welder asked who wanted to be the first to volunteer, hands shot up.
That's when Veronika Berezovskaya, 11, pulled on a face shield and gloves, and within moments, she was melting metal.
"It was really fun," she said afterward.
And when asked if she ever thought she would weld something before, she grinned and said, "Nope!"
A play on the term "jack of all trades," this was an event called Jill of All Trades Day.
For one day, the technical college opened its doors to 55 middle school girls so they could try welding, electrical wiring, and automotive repair. The day camp was free for the girls, with costs paid for by a series of corporate sponsors.
Nationwide, there is a growing demand for skilled trades, and Pinellas Technical College has seen its enrollment grow in recent years. At the Clearwater campus, 1,307 students enrolled last school year, up from 1,227 in 2022-23.
The St. Petersburg campus has seen an even larger jump, with 1,634 students last year, up 316 from a few years ago. The top programs in demand are nursing, electricity and automotive, school officials said.
Enrollment tends to be about 50% male, 50% female overall, but most women enroll in the nursing program, while mostly men take up automotive, welding and electrical trades courses.
On this day, though, the automotive floor was filled with women who were former students and recent graduates who signed up to teach the girls.
"Right now, we have seven girls in automotive, which is fantastic, because it's probably the most amount of females we've ever had," said Robert Scicolone, lead automotive instructor.
"We just got our first female master tech, which I'm very proud of," he added.
Middle school shop classes are rare these days, so events like this are a good way to show younger girls what they can do, said Isabelle Jaramillo, 21, a new student at Pinellas Technical College, as she taught a middle schooler how to tighten lug nuts.
"I hope they find that drive to want to get into trades. Because as someone who's been to college, I definitely think trades is where it's at," said Jaramillo, who recently left film school.
"I don't know, I was doing videography of cars, and I was like, dang, I actually want to work on the cars," she said.
"And I think this is way more fun. Putting things together, seeing them work... I've never had a dull day here, and I can't imagine I've ever gonna have a dull day in the industry," she said.
Nearby, a student named Katherine Boyd taught 14-year-old Lina Johnson how to change a tire.
"So let's say a customer buys a new set of tires. You need to take the whole wheel off, and then you need to take the tire off the wheel," Boyd said.
Johnson thought it was really interesting.
“This is getting a hands-on experience. She's been letting me do most of the stuff," Johnson said.
At another station, Katie Marshall taught some girls about car batteries and the role of the alternator, which helps charge the battery continuously while you're driving.
Marshall started classes at Pinellas Technical College when she was a junior in high school, in a dual enrollment program.
Now she's about to graduate and become a mechanic.
"It's a male-dominated field. But I just wanted to show girls that girls can do it too, because girls can," Marshall said. "I'm doing it right now. I want to show you. I want to show everybody, I can do it. You can do it!"
That enthusiasm is key to the program and the future of trades, according to Jake Prokop, director of Pinellas Technical College Clearwater campus.
"Diversity is a strength of our nation, and our girls not being part of some of these master trades kind of leaves us guys to kind of think about the way that we always done it. So it's always good to introduce somebody new, because then you have a different perspective, and you're like, why didn't I think of that?" he said.
"And also our employers are asking for it because they are looking for that competitive advantage and diversity can bring that to the table," he added.
He's a firm believer that the trades offer a path to self-reliance, no matter who you are or where you come from.
