If you were to ask a current senior what they’re doing in the fall, at least half of them will respond with one word: college. What many of them don’t realize yet is that college is not an end point, at least not for most people. There are certainly people who make their careers in higher education, but that won’t be the case for many of our students. For most of our students, there will be life after college, and for our students who are not college bound or who choose to delay postsecondary education, that life starts the morning after graduation.
These students are often asked what they want to BE when they “grow up” or what they’re going to do now that they’re “adults.” Parents of teenagers and middle and high school teachers are very familiar with the shoulder shrugs and blank stares you’ll receive if you ask this question, coupled with a mumbled “I don’t know” if you’re lucky. If we want better responses from these students and, more importantly, better futures for them, we need to change what we’re asking.
I know many adults who still don’t know what they want to do when (and if!) they grow up. A better question to ask is “what problem do you want to help solve?” This takes part of the pressure out of the question; you’re not asking people to give a definitive answer on what they will do for the rest of their lives. Instead, you’re asking them to consider the larger world and the other people who reside in it and to consider what issue they want to help solve. We need to give our students the ability to recognize the problems our communities face and the skills to be part of the solutions. CTE programs offer students both the exposure to the problems and the tools to solve them.
The Region 14 Applied Technology Center, which is located at ConVal High School with satellites at both Conant and Mascenic high schools, is focused on outfitting students with the skills they will need to help solve the problems of the future. The center offers a total of eleven different programs and a multitude of possible career paths, from Automotive Technician & Building Trades to Computer Programming & Pre-Engineering and Manufacturing & Welding. All of these programs are problem and project based. Students aren’t asked to think about solutions in theory only; they’re asked to try their solutions out through experiments, projects, and work based learning opportunities. They’re asked to collaborate with their peers as well as people currently working in that field. Instead of waiting until after graduation to start considering the problems they want to focus on, they start investigating those issues now, under the mentorship of industry experienced teachers.
The career and technical education (CTE) programs the students are participating in don’t steer them down a college path or a career path; instead they show students the many on and off ramps their paths can take as they learn and grow. The CTE programs at the Region 14 ATC offer more than 60 college credits, credits that students earn while they’re earning their high school credits and ones students keep for life, regardless of whether they go to college right after high school or not.
If you’d like to learn more about these opportunities and see the amazing things happening in your local high schools, stop by the Region 14 ATC Open House on Sunday, Feb. 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. to talk with our teachers and see and use the industry quality equipment our students are training on. Once you stop by, I know you’ll see why our students say “I see me in CTE.”
Jennifer Kiley is director of the Region 14 ATC at ConVal High School.