Students explore career and technical education skills across El Paso County

Jan. 28—Career and technical education opportunities abound in the Colorado Springs area as the industry — also known as trade or vocations — searches for fresh employees to add to its ranks.

Depending on the part of town, those course offerings can differ dramatically.

School districts use local job markets and labor statistics to drive programming decisions, according to Jessica McAllister, the secondary programs coordinator for Lewis-Palmer School District 38.

"You might talk to, I mean heck, a district down south that has an agriculture program. Well, that's because their economic area depends on agriculture," McAllister said. "We would be doing our students a disservice (in D-38) to really build their skills in agriculture, because that's not a part of our local economy."

D-38 instead offers business, engineering and computer science programs at both Lewis-Palmer and Palmer Ridge high schools. This year, the district also added construction to its lineup.

If a student's neighborhood school does not offer a specific program of interest, however, odds are another in the area does. CTE directors from across the county regularly get together to bounce ideas off one another and improve trade offerings at their respective schools. The end goal is to create opportunities so every kid has a pathway to exploring their interests.

At Widefield School District 3's Manufacturing Industry Learning Lab, or the MiLL, students can learn one of three trades handpicked by local professionals who identified Colorado Springs' trade employment needs: cabinet manufacturing, construction technology and welding technology. The classes are also open to outside districts that don't have the resources for these very specific trades.

The MiLL partners with businesses in the community, which supply state-of-the-art equipment for its expensive-to-operate programs.

The facility was initially conceived as a way for students to develop relationships with industry professionals by providing four years of hands-on experience before they graduate. As a result, students often leave the MiLL with opportunities lined up, according to D-3 Career and Technical Education Director Nikki Carter.

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"We do have partnerships with industry folks ... who actually help us provide internships so our kids have a place to go when they graduate," Carter said. "That's I think the hard part in K-12 education is the gap and making sure that when kids are ready to graduate we have something to give them or some place to help facilitate the next piece where they can at least get information for a job and help set them up for success in that way."

But the way in which schools think about skilled trades has evolved over time, according to Kolleen Johnson, the director of student success at Manitou Springs School District 14.

"CTE is not your dad's vocational programming," Johnson said.

While Manitou High School students can build a house in the school parking lot — a program that has become popular in districts across El Paso County in recent years — Johnson said students have many more opportunities to dabble in CTE that aren't traditionally thought of as skilled trades. Nevertheless, the district has expanded its thinking.

Students can explore the technical side of theater by operating sound and lights or constructing sets. Senior art students are interning for a local business owner as they design a patio mural. There's even a metalsmithing class where students can produce their own jewelry or sculptures to sell or hold shows. Each of these falls under the CTE umbrella.

"So really shifting our mindset to say, it's not that college isn't for everybody, or it is for everybody. It's that post-secondary education and training is for everybody. What that post-secondary piece looks like should be different," Johnson said. "We also need to change what high school looks like so that some kids can get what they need while they're still here."

Schools in D-38 offer Adobe Photoshop and InDesign courses in middle school as a digital media and communications pathway, and in high school students can earn Adobe credentials, in addition to school broadcast and newspaper opportunities. Middle schoolers can also dabble in a biomedical sciences pathway via classes like medical detectives or forensic science, in which students learn about fingerprinting, ballistics and taking and reading blood pressure.

Exposure to a variety of skills early on will help students identify new passions — or even identify what they definitely do not want to do — before pursuing expensive degrees.

"It's important right now to celebrate their discoveries," McAllister said, "and to give them lots of different options and opportunities so that we can start honing in closer to what's going to get them to that place of being a fulfilled contributor of society."

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