One evening on the West Side of Chicago, Adonis Summerville was on a city bus when a friend from high school came aboard and asked him one life changing question: what are you doing with your life? What was an expected question between old friends took Summerville by surprise.
“It was one of the hardest questions,” recalled Summerville. “I was never really approached like that before. I felt kind of attacked.” When Summerville responded with the same question, his friend told him that he was learning CNC at Jane Addams Resource Corporation (JARC). Ten years later, not only is Summerville a certified CNC professional, but he teaches it at the same program where he learned it.
When Summerville went through JARC’s training, the program did not have as many machines as they do now, so most days it was first come, first serve. This made him eager to get into the shop before anyone else, including the instructor. With a deeper purpose behind his punctuality beyond just getting to class on time, he still had to learn the programming, which he found extremely challenging.
“One day after class, I'm taking the train home, flipping through my book, trying to understand CNC programming and it just clicked,” Summerville said. “That was my lightbulb moment, and I knew that I had to take advantage of that.” With his newfound confidence and a six-month old daughter at home, Summerville became motivated to learn everything he could about CNC. He felt that he was on a different path than his fellow classmates. He finished the program in three weeks and got a job upon completion.
“I felt like this was definitely my calling. I turned it into a ball of fire, I ran with it, and did not take it for granted. I think it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said, remembering his thinking at the time, before joking about not following in his father’s footsteps. “I don't want to be an electrician. My father was an electrician. That's too dangerous for me.”
As an instructor at JARC, he takes a hands-off approach, preferring that trainees learn CNC in a factory-like atmosphere rather than in a traditional pedagogical manner. At first, this was costly for JARC because students kept crashing the machines. Listening to him break it down, his teaching style would intimidate even the most eager trainee, but Summerville has proven that it works. When he was a JARC trainee, the program was only long enough to be certified for CNC mill, not CNC lathe. When he became the instructor, he wanted students leaving the program with a certification in both mill and lathe. Some of his students have done just that in six to eight weeks.
Summerville’s goal is for his students to understand how CNC works from start to finish, so that they do not fear crashing the machine. He wants them to understand that on a job they may only have 30 days to prove their worth to a company, so they need to be fully accountable for their machine and their parts. He wants them to get accustomed to being taught by their peers and teaching others what they know, because in a work environment they will be placed in similar situations, sometimes with people who are completely different from them.
When Regan Brewer, now Executive Director of JARC, approached Summerville to be one of their metalworking skills instructors, he turned her down many times. He had been working for John Crane, a local firm, making six figures a year, and teaching was far from his mind. Then in 2017, she caught him at the right moment, offering him much less money than he was making at John Crane, but more of a meaningful experience. Though he loved his job and felt needed at John Crane, he made the decision to join JARC. Then, John Crane offered him a part-time position – something they never do – so that he could continue to work there while teaching. Once Summerville was offered teaching positions at both of JARC’s locations in Chicago and Baltimore, he had to leave John Crane completely.
After three years instructing at JARC, Summerville is grateful to be one making a way for others to succeed. “A few years before I met my friend on that city bus, I was in prison, ” said Summerville. “I always tell people that's why I came back to teach at JARC. People here are trying to change their life, which is what this class did for me. I could have just been another statistic, but I felt like I made the changes that I needed to make to get where I am now. I’ve come a long way, and I owe a big part of that to my friend I saw on the bus and to JARC.”