Lima Senior High School officials announced a new career tech program coming to the school next fall and efforts to get students thinking about career tech and learning important skills at a younger age.
The announcements came during a Thursday press conference to kick off Career Tech Month. It was held in the school’s construction trades classrooms/lab, one of 11 Career Tech programs offered to juniors and seniors at Lima Senior.
The school has developed a Skills in a Box concept in an effort to get elementary-age students familiar with Career Tech as well as give them the skills needed to enter the program when they get to high school.
Each Career Tech instructor came up with five skills their students need to know to be successful in their programs. Officials took those skills and developed age-appropriate activities. They will be put in a “box” at each elementary school for teachers to use with students.
“The point is to not only help students obtain new skills which they should then have mastered by the time they are in high school, but hopefully they will also figure out what type of skills they are best at and most passionate in pursuing,” said Courtnee Morris, the school’s new head of Career Tech.
This should help with placing students in the right programs when they get to high school and also in keeping them in the program and successfully completing it, Morris added.
The Skills in the Box leads nicely into the existing Career Connections programs in middle school. The program gives students a deeper introduction into possible careers. Once in high school, every freshman takes a College and Career Readiness Class, which helps determine a student’s progression and classes he or she will take at Lima Senior.
The plan is to now add an introduction class into one of the three areas of Career Tech: Industrial Manufacturing Trades, Human Health and Public Services and Communication Technology. Career Tech instructors will teach parts of that class. Sophomores will then take a Career Exploration class where they get hands-on experience in the Career Tech area they are interested in.
New program coming
A new Audio Engineering Technology program will be available to students in the fall. The program will teach the basics of music theory, audio recording and production. Students will learn how to run a recording studio and to produce audio for video productions. Lima Senior will have its own recording studio on site.
The program joins agricultural education, auto technology, construction trades, culinary and food service management, early childhood education, engineering technology, graphic communications, marketing education (DECA), patient care technology, welding and metal fabrication, and World of Work.
Plans are currently in the works to add a Media Video Production program in a couple years.
Career Tech Month is celebrated across the country in February. The Lima City Schools will spend the month highlighting its career tech programs and students on its website and social media pages.
“Career Tech is such a vital piece of what we do here at Lima Senior High School,” Superintendent Jill Ackerman said. “It provides an additional level of options for our students, and our programs set a foundation and pathway for student success, whether their future is the workforce or higher education.”