Business and community partnerships are everything when it comes to providing hands-on learning experiences for students in Berkeley County School District.
Local industry and community stakeholders gathered at Stratford High Thursday morning to receive an update on BCSD’s CTE programs and progress toward ensuring career readiness for all students. BCSD’s Office of Career and Technical Education led the discussion.
Taking a good look at the CTE programs in the district was a great way to wrap up February, which just happens to be Career and Technical Education Month.
By 2030, one of the district’s goals is to further increase the percentage of students who are college and career-ready by the time they graduate. The district aims to accomplish this through work-based learning classes, as well as community and business partnerships that can provide students with opportunities to apply their learning in a professional working environment.
Some of the ways students are considered “career ready” upon graduating include, but are not limited to: taking and completing a CTE program at their school, completing the South Carolina High School Employability Credential, or earning a national or state industry credential – which is where BCSD’s industry and community partners come into play, because many of them allow students to come to their place of business to earn work hours.
Among some of the CTE and work-based learning successes this school year is the addition of the Siemens Engineering Pathway curriculum at Philip Simmons High, which teaches students the most necessary strokes of engineering and prime their education to more seamlessly transition them into a potential engineering career. In the future, BCSD is looking forward to adding an electrical line worker program and a drone technology program at the high school level.
BCSD also entered into a three-way partnership along with Berkeley County Economic and Development and Trident Technical College to introduce the pilot program of FutureReady. The concept is very broad in that it is not geared toward one particular cluster area or career area, but it is reaching graduating seniors who may have not had a chance to take CTE programs while in school, or maybe do not yet know what their plans are after high school. The current pilot program includes 10 students from Goose Creek High and Hanahan High who are currently receiving hands-on, work-based learning experiences in manufacturing at Trident. The plan is to further expand this to program to include more career paths and increase student participation.
FutureReady also has a summer cohort that is not new, but a great way time for students to work on the soft skills needed to land a job. It is month long program: the first two weeks heavily focuses on soft skills training, the second two weeks center on having the students apply what they have learned at an actual job site. This is another reason BCSD’s industry and business partners are super important –BCSD’s CTE staff members urged its partners Thursday morning to let them know of opportunities for students to come to their job sites to work on those soft skills. More information for students on how to apply for the cohort this summer is forthcoming.
Thursday morning’s get-together wrapped up with a tour of Stratford High’s CTE program, led by school administrators; visitors got to check out students working in classes related to culinary arts, health science, engineering, auto-tech, media, sports medicine, personal finance, web design, advertising, computing, and image editing.
Local industry and community stakeholders looking to get involved in CTE and work-based learning opportunities for students are welcome to reach out to Sonya Addison-Stewart, BCSD’s Director of Career and Technical Education, at stewarts@bcsdschools.net.
