Northeast Indiana districts bring career, technical education exploration to middle school level | Future Focused

A teen once approached Nicholas Gray with an unusual request after completing an automotive activity at the Jim Kelley Career Pathway Center: He asked if he could take his greasy pair of gloves home.

Upon further inquiry, Gray said he learned the teen wanted the souvenir from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Fort Wayne facility so he could show his parents. The boy – who had been taking apart starters to learn why they weren’t working – told Gray he had never done anything so cool.

“That’s the power of this building,” said Gray, the organization’s vice president of strategic partnerships and workforce development. “We’re not saying, ‘Here’s a video on what a mechanic does.’ We’re not giving them a pamphlet. We’re saying, ‘You think you want to be an auto tech? Well, there’s a motor. Let’s start (tweaking) on it. Let’s see if you really want to do that.’ ”

The Fairfield Avenue facility is in its second full academic year of providing career exploration experiences to students as young as sixth grade. Along with opening its five learning labs to club members, the 13,000-square-foot training center regularly welcomes Fort Wayne Community Schools seventh and eighth graders.

Such early exposure to career and technical education is also happening in Garrett-Keyser-Butler Community Schools, which has designed a multi-industry, hands-on experience shop specifically for grades five through eight. It is connected to the weld shop that high schoolers use and is equipped with battery-powered and non-electric tools. It’s used for an elective course that covers topics including shop safety, vertical and horizontal construction, manufacturing, welding, agriculture, robotics, architecture and engineering.

Justin Weber, Garrett High School assistant principal, said it isn’t about locking students into a specific path at a young age.

“Kids that are in (hands-on career and technical education courses) still have the mobility to be college-bound, to take dual-credit core curriculum classes,” Weber said. “They’re just learning, in addition to those things, skills-based electives that they may or may not be interested in.”

Seeing possibilities

Opening a career pathway center wasn’t out of bounds for the Boys and Girls Clubs – an organization with a mission of inspiring young people to reach their full potential as productive, caring and responsible citizens, Gray said.

The nonprofit organization announced plans for the center in January 2022. The $4.5 million project included about $2.5 million for renovations to 2439 Fairfield Ave., a two-story space within walking distance of the clubs’ facility at Fairfield Avenue and Pontiac Street.

FWCS uses the facility during the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Gray said, and the center is open on evenings to students from any district, provided they are club members. He added adults ages 18 to 23 sometimes use the space when younger students aren’t present.

The center’s labs address five sectors – automotive, manufacturing, construction trades, health sciences, and information technology, robotics and computer-aided design.

“We really try to promote college, trades, whatever,” Gray said, noting an estimated 4,500 students visited the center last academic year between club members and FWCS students. “You tell us what you want. We’re going to get you there. We’re not pushing one or the other.”

Each FWCS seventh and eighth grader visits the facility only once per academic year, so organizers make the most of those roughly 90 minutes by planning three or four activities, said Jesse Webb, the district’s director of career and technical education. “You can’t go too in depth with them,” he said, “but you want to give them time to explore.”

Webb and Corey Schoon, career development program director at Garrett, agreed that having students discover what they dislike is just as important as learning what they do like. Webb said this can help students make better choices about their postsecondary plans, and Schoon said it can benefit employers, too.

“You don’t want to hire somebody to do a job, and they get in there – and you’ve invested all this time into recruiting them and training them – and they don’t like it,” Schoon said.

Engaging activities

Garrett Middle School sixth graders spent one late August morning in the multi-industry shop learning to read tape measures at desks built by students the previous year.

Kloey Clifford, 11, had a simple reason for taking the elective. “I like construction,” she said, “and my grandpa and uncle are construction workers.”

Kloey said she used a hand saw and other tools within the first weeks of the academic year. She looks forward to the lessons.

“It’s really fun,” she said. “You get to build a lot of cool stuff.”

Schoon noted eighth graders should earn an Occupational Safety and Health Administration certification for completing training about common job-related safety and health hazards.

FWCS eighth graders this fall are participating in health science, automotive and manufacturing activities at the Kelley Center. Webb said rotations feature a laparoscopic surgery simulation, phlebotomy exercises and use of a SimSpray machine to paint a car door. Students also wear virtual reality headsets that allow them to go through the motions of changing oil and servicing a commercial airplane.

Spring semester, seventh graders will participate in virtual welding, programming of a robotic car and a construction trades activity in which they install a hinge on two blocks of wood, Webb said. “They’re actually engaged,” he said.

The division of activities ensures the middle schoolers will be introduced to at least five career fields within the FWCS Schools of Success, Webb said, referring to an initiative the district launched this academic year.

Beginning next academic year, high school sophomores will start pursuing a pathway of their choosing in one of three Schools of Success: the School of Health Sciences & Human Services; the School of Manufacturing, Engineering, Technology & Trades; and the School of Business & the Arts.

Each FWCS high school will have the same Schools of Success, but officials have said the pathways – or sequences of courses designed to help students meet graduation requirements while focusing on a career field – will vary by high school.

The district wants to give students as many experiences as possible – including the field trip to the Jim Kelley Career Pathway Center – so they can make educated decisions about which School of Success and pathway they want to pursue, Webb said.

At the Oct. 14 school board meeting, Webb shared a video featuring student feedback about the center. Blackhawk Middle School student Razaz Musa said she appreciated the various workshops offered.

“This experience is more visual,” the eighth grader said. “It allows you to see what’s actually happening or what would actually happen if you were to join the workforce or the real world rather than just to learn about it and take a test.”

Webb noted a new experience launched this academic year for sixth graders. Parkview Health is bringing its mobile simulation lab to the schools, and the students rotate through three activities, including CPR and an ambulance tour.

“It all goes back to trying to help them find their interest to make their learning relevant in high school,” Webb said.

The Indiana Department of Education said absenteeism data released last month underscored the urgency behind ongoing efforts to rethink the high school experience and ensure more parents and students see the value in education.

Students were considered chronically absent if they missed at least 10% of the year’s school days, or about 3½ weeks.

Nearly 20% of students statewide were chronically absent last academic year, the education department said. It indicated rates were highest at high schools, specifically in the 11th and 12th grades. About 33% of students were chronically absent during their senior year.

Blackhawk student Cooper Letner, who enjoyed the Kelley Center’s medical exercises, said in the video he is looking forward to enrolling in the FWCS Career Academy as a high schooler.

“I don’t think this has really chosen a career for me,” Cooper said, “but I do think it has given me many, multiple options for the future.”