Here at Sterling High School, we are heavily involved in Career Technical Education, also known as CTE.
Essentially, CTE is a learning structure that prepares students to enter the workforce or be poised to succeed in college by providing industry-standard certifications to them as they complete the program during their high school years.
Here is how SHS officially describes it:
Career and Technical Education is organized educational activities that offer a sequence of courses to provide students with coherent and rigorous content aligned with challenging academic standards and relevant technical knowledge and skills needed to prepare for further education and careers in current or emerging professions. CTE courses provide technical skill proficiency, an industry-recognized credential, a certificate, or an associate degree and include competency-based applied learning that contributes to academic knowledge, higher-order reasoning and problem-solving skills, work attitudes, general employability skills, technical skills, occupation-specific skills, and knowledge of all aspects of an industry.
Sterling currently offers six pathways, which are the programs of learning I’ve discussed. Two more are in the works for next year.
It think this is a pretty great program. My journalism courses are part of a pathway, so I get to see firsthand how many fantastic opportunities CTE affords the students. Also, it does result in extra funding for the district, the proceeds of which are designed to go toward the CTE programs for equipment and whatnot.
Like I said, the benefits are many.
What’s cool is that I will be the CTE coordinator for SHS next year. I have a lot to learn, but I’m excited about the possibilities.
If you would like to see the flyer SHS uses to discuss and promote CTE locally, click the following link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxHBSJA9t1zITjNYamVfQVF1Yjg/edit?usp=sharing
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