Image Caption: Students in Health Science practicing drawing blood. Photo by: Maya Borkar

Within FISD, the Career and Technical Education Center (CTE) provides students with a more in-depth look into their future careers. The widespread selection of classes allows students to gain experience in fields such as medicine, law enforcement, engineering, and more. All of these career-oriented classes implement beneficial skills that allow students to form their own opinions on issues such as healthcare and politics. At the CTE center, teenagers come in as students and leave as the world’s next microbiologists, lawyers, judges, journalists and more. 

¨The field I want to go into is general surgery,” said Samantha Moran, a senior at Memorial High School. “[the CTE center] helped me realize my passion for medicine in a way that I never realized before.”

In regular high school classes, students get a theoretical education in which they rarely have the opportunity to get hands-on experience. For instance, in the CTE’s medical microbiology class, students have the chance to work with real-life bacteria and be involved in real microbiology. 

¨In my regular classes in Heritage High School, I wouldn’t get to work with real bacteria,¨ said junior Kailasadatta Boggaram. ¨But here, I’m able to actively see how it grows and see how things affect its growth.¨ 

The CTE center course also allows students to form and discuss different ideas while also developing their own opinions. 

¨It definitely helps you with figuring out certain parts of the field to see if you like it, and it also helps with your ideas of what you want to do when you’re older.¨ said Wakeland High School sophomore Garrett Brooks.   

In classes such as political science, government and law enforcement, it can be hard to keep an unbiased setting; however, the CTE center teachers attempt to ensure an equal setting in which students are free to share their ideas and develop their own thoughts on the subject.

“It’s probably the biggest challenge I face,” said Political Science and Survey of Government teacher Cory Cummings. “The best I can do is just offer the information and then allow my students to create opinions on their own. It’s not my place to offer my opinion.”

With all the tools and opportunities provided by the CTE Center, students are able to get one step closer to reaching their goals and being the change they want to see in the world. 

¨I want the conditions for nurses and CNAs to kind of improve, [because the] doctors get all the glory and all and they’re very much glorified in every way,” said Memorial senior Samantha Moran. “I think it’s the nurses and the people in the background who do a lot of the real work and a lot of the patient work and they should get a lot of recognition for that as well.¨

As teenagers get older, the transition to the workforce gets closer and closer. With help from the CTE Center, the transition from high school to a career is smoother.  

¨I think CTE classes are the way of the future,” said Health Science teacher Jennifer Hanna. “I think they do hands-on activity, showing them real world experiences. And I think you learn so much it’s eye-opening, what young adults see in the community and it helps them prepare for the future.¨