the beginning of an idea

• by katherine cope, founder

My journey to launching the gap year project began during my kids’ years in high school. There had always been the concern that, while they were learning all they should academically, they might not be accumulating the life skills they would need after high school. It’s not really the fault of the schools. Practical skills are no longer required as part of the curriculum, so they don’t get funding or support and, sadly, they’ve fallen out of favor. In fact, very few schools teach home economics or other similarly practical skills. The closest hands-on, utilitarian alternatives offered at our local public high school are auto shop and maker-space classes.

That leaves the responsibility of teaching the most basic life skills firmly in the hands of parents and caregivers, many of whom are already overworked and overwhelmed with raising children. Add to that the modern-day ‘outsource it’ mentality common to our age group of Boomers and Gen Xers, and the result is a generation of emerging adults who haven’t been taught some of the most routine, yet useful, day-to-day skills.

With that idea in mind, I set out to design a program of life skills classes, much like those once taught in home economics. The idea centered around preparing students for everyday life, in a way that high school (and all the other years of education before that) had not - with instruction in budgeting, basic cooking, sewing, bike/car maintenance, emergency prep, how to interview, etc.