SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — Students in the Central Valley School District are being set up for success both inside and outside of the classroom.
Through the district’s career and technical education classes, students are learning important life skills, skills the district says are never too early to learn.
High school students who pursue a career and technical education pathway get to choose between five different programs.
“In Central Valley, we offer programming in five programming areas: business and marketing, skilled and technical, STEM, health sciences and family and consumer science,” said CTE director Jennifer Chase.
Before they have to choose, students are encouraged to experiment and find the path they like. That experimentation starts in middle school.
“With these programs, we’re able to give these kids a taste of it here so that when they go to high school, they’re not learning it for the first time,” said Evergreen Middle School science and robotics teacher Jacob Armstrong. “They’re not seeing it for the first time.”
The CTE classes at Evergreen include coding, robotics and 3D printing.
Danika Morais and Collins Frates are eighth graders at Evergreen Middle School who both took robotics.
“(My favorite part is) overcoming the challenges and feeling that sense of joy when you complete something that’s really hard,” Morais said.
Both say they now have an interest in STEM.
“It really challenges you,” said Frates. “It’s another step up from robotics.”
The classes at the middle school level are also collaborating with industry leaders, touring facilities and seeing what it would be like to have a certain job after graduation.
“What’s really cool about it is you get to see all aspects of engineering,” said Connor Kuhl, teacher of science and 3D Design and modeling. “You see the manufacturing, you see the engineering, you see the welding, you see all parts of how we get what we get for our materials.”
Teachers at Evergreen say these classes not only prepare students for high school but set students up with skills they will use for the rest of their life.
“We’re also teaching the professionalism behind it, which is what we want our students to do,” Kuhl said. “We want them to not get the job but keep the job well.”
This year, the district added coding and family and consumer science to the middle schools. It hopes to add more as interest grows.
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