Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida Students Explore Skilled Trades with Groove Jones’ VR Experiences

Skilled trades are having a moment, and Groove Jones is proud to be part of the reason why. On July 13, 2026, about 80 ninth- through twelfth-grade students from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida climbed aboard the Be Pro Be Proud Mobile Learning Lab at Orange Park High School to try their hand at welding, truck driving, crane operation, electrical work, and more. The event was covered by the Florida Times-Union, and it’s a great snapshot of the work Groove Jones has been building for Be Pro Be Proud since the program’s earliest days.

What Happened at Orange Park High School

The Jacksonville-based WareWorks Skilled Trades Institute helped bring the tour to Clay County, giving students direct access to the immersive stations Groove Jones designed for Be Pro Be Proud’s mobile trailer. Students moved between VR headsets and full-scale simulators, trying out careers they might never have considered otherwise. Clay County Superintendent of Schools David Broskie was on hand to watch students work through the stations, and coaches like Antrinell Lamar walked students through the earning potential tied to trades like welding and commercial driving.

The Skilled Trades Experiences Students Tried

The mobile lab featured more than a dozen simulations built around real-world skilled trades, including:

Lineman VR training, where students like 16-year-old Norman Armstrong stepped into the boots of a utility lineman using a full VR headsetSemi-truck driving simulators, guided by veteran truck driver Kelin Wortham
Articulated dump truck simulators, which gave students like Audrey Redd and Josiah Smith a feel for heavy equipment operation
Welding simulations, which resonated with students like 16-year-old Jeremiah Davis, who comes from a family of welders and hopes to travel the world through the trade
Engine building in VR, tried by 15-year-old Samir Brown McDonald
EMT and crane operation experiences, rounding out the day’s hands-on options

One student summed up her simulator run simply: truck driving, she said, was not for her. That’s exactly the point of experiential career exploration. Students get to test-drive a profession, literally, before committing years of their life to training for it.

Why Groove Jones Builds These Experiences

Be Pro Be Proud is a national nonprofit working to reshape how students think about skilled trades careers at a moment when much of the existing skilled workforce is nearing retirement. Groove Jones has partnered with Be Pro Be Proud’s leadership team and state sponsors since the program’s early days in Arkansas, building the gamified VR experiences that now travel the country inside custom 53-foot mobile trailers. The program has since expanded into Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Mexico, and now events like this one in Florida, reaching hundreds of thousands of students along the way.

Each VR module Groove Jones develops is designed to do more than entertain. Students earn ranks, see realistic pay potential, and walk through the actual skills a job requires, all inside a game-like experience that lowers the barrier to trying something new. It’s a strategy grounded in a simple idea: when students can experience a career firsthand, they make more informed choices about their future, and skilled trades stop feeling like a fallback and start feeling like a genuine, well-paying path forward.

The Bigger Picture: Human Skills in an AI-Driven World

What makes this Northeast Florida stop especially timely is its framing. The Times-Union coverage highlighted that these careers rely on human skills, craftsmanship, and hands-on expertise, standing in deliberate contrast to the growing presence of AI in the workforce conversation. Groove Jones builds these VR tools using cutting-edge immersive technology, but the goal has always been to point students toward careers that depend on human hands and human judgment. That combination, using advanced tech to champion human-centered work, is at the heart of every Be Pro Be Proud experience Groove Jones creates.

Explore More

Want to see how Groove Jones builds immersive VR training and recruitment experiences like the ones featured in this tour? Check out our Be Pro Be Proud case study or reach out to our team to talk about building your own custom VR experience.