CTE: Focus on the future

• Lucy Stiles, computer tech skills student

Lucy Stiles is a student in Patricia Thoreson’s computer tech skills class. She and other students made and hung posters throughout HHS that promote career and technical education and highlight careers they are interested in. February is CTE month in Wisconsin. Submitted photo

Talk about it

According to Melisa Hansen, Hudson School District coordinator of Career and Technical Education, these are the best of times and worst of times for career and technical education.

The history of career and technical education has often found it broken off and separate from the rest of a school’s curriculum. It was characterized as education that prepared students to enter directly into the world of work, but that’s changing according to Hansen.

“Career and technical education is for all students for all careers. Every career pathway students choose has a direct linkage to a CTE course that specifically relates and/or enhances their learning,” said Hansen.

Beyond the classrooms at places like HHS, Hansen said CTE has relevance on a much larger scale.

“CTE is preparing students of all ages to help drive America’s success and vitality. CTE can have a direct and profound impact on the real and immediate issues concerning our nation’s workforce development, economic vitality, global competitiveness, student achievement, school reform, college-going rates and technical proficiency. It is more relevant today than perhaps at any other time in its history.”

Hansen says CTE in Hudson schools integrates core academics with real-world relevance and developing America’s most valuable resource — its people by helping them gain the skills, technical knowledge, academic foundation and real-world experience they need to prepare for the high-skill, high-demand and high-wage careers of today and tomorrow.

Hansen said the success of CTE in Hudson is based in part on partnerships with local business and industry partners who serve on the CTE Advisory Council. These partners work with school personnel to re-evaluate, re-think and re-invent coursework to strengthen the programming offered and bring relevance to the classroom experience.

Hansen said the district continues to build post-secondary connections to offer technical college courses to HHS students. During the 2012-13 school year, nearly twenty courses offered within CTE Departments — Family Consumer Science, Business and Information Technology, Marketing and Technology and Engineering — will offer opportunities for students to earn direct college credits, getting a head start on post-secondary degrees while in high school.

The Department of Public Instruction has declared February CTE month. A variety of events are planned at HHS including: