On Tuesday our Career and Technical Advisory Committee will meet to discuss how best to use new state money for Career and Technical Education (CTE). The meeting will offer the group a chance to look ahead and, if appropriate, begin to set a new direction for the district’s CTE.
For the past several years CTE has been recognized as an underutilized part of our students’ secondary school experience. But due to relatively tight budgets and a comfort with what we know and have, our approach toward CTE has been fairly traditional. That is, the industrial arts classes that we often call shop make up much of our CTE offerings. There is an increased interest however, in having CTE more seamlessly integrated into the regular curriculum. Rather than have CTE be a thing that you do at the end of the building in shops or home ec rooms, it can be a career pathway of selected courses which explore and prepare a student for a career in for example, the health field. This pathway would necessarily be application based, but it could also be used to meet graduation requirements in math and science.
The small size of our secondary schools limits what we can offer our students. It is critical then, that what we decide on for what is next is both pressing and realistic.
One Comment
The idea of career pathways within a school is one that is long overdue. Many of our students do not go to college. Our traditional way of presenting educational choices during high school years fails to prepare these students for careers that will enable them to earn a living on their own. It will be a bright step for all when we have a system that prepares 18 year olds for the future, be it sustainable work or college.