When Dale was seven years old, he helped his father build a 1965 Ford Mustang. “I knew from then on, I wanted to be a mechanic,” he shares.

After finishing school, Dale began working the trade. Within four years, he was licenced, and within eight years, he was running the shop. However, a decade in, he was injured on the job.

“I ended up spending three months laying on my back looking at the ceiling,” he says. “They said I’d never do mechanic work again. So, I had to make a switch.”

Initially leaning towards studying engineering, his uncle suggested he go into education, and he was drawn partly by the time off and the ability to coach sports. Before long, Dale found he had a passion for education and the positive impact his work had on students.

“Watching students come into your course, and seeing how they are when they leave, it’s a very great feeling knowing that you were there to help build those individuals and to move them on,” he says.

He spent 29 years working in education — 17 years in the classroom as a teacher, before going into administration, becoming a vice-principal and then a principal.

At 57 years old, Dale retired. However, that August, he found himself preparing for the school year anyways.

“Every August, I was always putting my stuff back together, getting ready to go to school. And I was putting my stuff back together. My wife goes like, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m getting ready to go to school.’ And she goes, ‘You retired, you’re not going back to school.’ And that’s when I knew I had to do something else — that I wasn’t really ready to retire.”

He began teaching employment skills courses for adults, and six years ago, he joined our team at Neil Squire.

Now, he is the instructor for the Fredericton cohort of our Empower3D program, leading youth with disabilities in a 14-week course of pre-employment and skills training before a 12-week work placement in the manufacturing sector.

Dale brings with him his extensive experience in education, helping the participants learn not only the hard skills they’ll need on the job, but also the soft skills they’ll need to thrive in the job search and the workplace.

“I’ve taught just about every type of course,” he says. “I think I have a good way with people and bringing out the best in them, and it’s based upon all those years in which I’ve worked with many, many different students with different abilities and different personalities.”

“We all have those skills. It’s whether or not we use them or know how to use those skills, and being able to show them that, yes, you do have them and to help them flourish with those skills makes me enjoy what I do.”

From his time as a mechanic and in school administration, Dale also has a lot of experience on the other side of the hiring process as an employer, a perspective he can share with Empower3D participants to help them get job ready.

“It gave me a good understanding of what an employer actually is going to expect,” he shares. “It gave me a good understanding of doing interviews, how to conduct an interview, what to expect from the individual, how to read body language with people, and those kinds of things.”

“And these are the things that I was trying to teach our students as they were going through the course, and how if you can master some of those things, it can give you a leg up when you’re writing up your resume or when you’re going in for that interview.”

Dale sees Empower3D as a win-win for employers and participants alike — giving youth with disabilities the skills and practical work experience to succeed in a wide range of career possibilities, while providing much-needed skilled workers for employers in the manufacturing sector.

“The students that we have coming in, it’s endless as to where they can go and the things that they can actually do in the manufacturing sector,” he says. “I think it’s going to be a good thing for everybody.”

Are you a youth with a disability interested in developing your skills and gaining valuable work experience in the manufacturing sector? Contact the Empower3D team at empower3d@neilsquire.ca or your nearest Neil Squire office to apply or for more information.

Read our other entries in our Empower3D Instructor Series: McRae and Brad