Coast Union focuses on career pathways

How can learning about veterinary science prepare a student for a career in human medicine? Do students know how to enhance cybersecurity? What’s the difference between welding and blacksmithing? Why would you want to kiss a cow?

Just ask Coast Union High School students, teachers and administrators, thanks to new classes, clubs and upcoming opportunities for career-path learning that will have teens knowing all that and more, hands on.

Lately, many people are learning about what’s new and in the works at Coast Unified School District and its middle and high school. That’s thanks in part to a recently released 11.5-minute video and a “take it on the road” presentation being given at various service club meetings and other gatherings. Among those giving the presentation are district Superintendent Vicki Schumacher, Board of Trustees President Del Clegg and Dan Hartzell, middle school teacher in the area of career technical education.

For those who’d rather see the video from the comfort of home, the “Death of Education and the Dawn of Learning” video about Coast Union’s Pathways to Education program is on the district’s website.

Pathways

The district’s big focus is on getting students to look beyond college into their career paths, and what it will take to get them there.

Next year’s new “career pathway” courses include:

▪ Agriculture/veterinary science career pathway.

▪ Arts-media-entertainment “Communication by Design” English certification pathway, including computer programming, digital audio production, cybersecurity, advanced digital media production and professional videography (clients pay the students to plan, design and prepare the videos).

High school Principal Jonathan Sison said in an email interview, “Administration, counselors and teacher leaders continue to plan and develop those college career-readiness pathways, which are to be implemented this fall with lots of support” from the district administrators and county Office of Education.”

Hartzell said Monday, Jan. 29, that under the new programs, students on the pathway programs will be able to graduate “with college credits, industry certification and high school diplomas,” plus hands-on, interactive understanding of their chosen fields.

All the new learning experiences are designed to help students be better prepared for college and/or their future careers, whatever those might be. As the video explains, the widely varied training helps their students know what the “end game is after college,” along with what each student is or is not interested in doing as a career, vocation or avocation.

Hartzell said students often select a college and then, while they’re there, begin to figure out their future. While they’re still in high school, “they don’t think about what happens after college.”

In the career pathways program, he said, the timing on that process is flipped. “We get the kids to explore the opportunities, and try to think about ‘what career do I want’ and then ‘what college fits that?’ ” It becomes “what do you see yourself doing in the future, and what’s the pathway to get there?”

He said planning ahead doesn’t lock a student into a specific pathway. For instance, he said the small school doesn’t have a medical program, but various skills taught in the ag/veterinary program translate well into the human medical field, such as learning about viruses and bacteria, giving shots, etc.

Hartzell said the school’s size limits the number of career pathways it can support at one time, even with grants from the California Department of Education.

“We chose the pathways we did because we had credentialed teachers who could teach those classes.”

Each pathway includes three “college-prep approved” courses and industry involvement or internship. For instance, the ag/veterinary pathway will “start with ag mechanics, then goes into animal science, then into veterinary science,” Hartzell explained.

Some specifics:

▪ Welding vs. blacksmithing? Welding is one of several blacksmithing skills, in which one piece of metal is fused to another. Among many other blacksmithing skills are forging (using a heavy hammer to shape a hot piece of metal against an anvil that isn’t hot), heat-treating and finishing.

Coast Union maintenance lead David Bidwell said, “Basically, welding as we know it is a process using electricity to join metal. The blacksmithing process uses heat from a forge to either join metal or shape metal. We use both modern and traditional processes. For example, a pattern can be cut out of plate steel using plasma-cutting technology, then placed into our forge, heated and shaped into a form.”

Some CUHS students are learning those skills in the welding class and a blacksmithing club.

▪ Expanding agricultural education makes sense in a 150-year-old community with a history of dairying, farming and ranching, an area in which current crops include avocados, grapes, citrus, sugar peas and forage. Livestock include cattle, poultry, pigs and various horses, even Clydesdales and more exotic animals.

But kissing a cow? It was an FFA fundraiser in the last week of February (which just happened to be National FFA Week). Students donated dollars into jars, each of which was labeled with a teacher’s name. The teacher that got the most “donations,” had to kiss the cow. The lucky winner? Teacher Thom Holt.

▪ Sison said other CUHS activities also stretch students’ worlds and experiences.

Just to name a few:

▪ The Drama Club’s blockbuster spring musical, “The Little Mermaid,” which takes to the gymnasium’s “stage” Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays March 11 through March 20.

▪ Recent 3-D art classes in which the students built ceramic rain sticks and hero busts.

▪ Lucia Capacchione’s art presentation on “Making Your Talent Work for You.”

▪ Various other FFA activities, including raising more livestock for the Mid-State Fair and attending the world’s largest ag expo, held recently in Tulare.

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 11:28 AM with the headline "Coast Union focuses on career pathways."