By Mary Owen
Stayton High School students can now select a course of study from the new Career Pathway program for the upcoming school year.
“We are excited about this for students, and believe it will not only add relevance for them, but prepare them with the skills and knowledge needed to have a leg up going into one of these areas,” Principal Alan Kirby said. “The goal of Pathways is, for, one, to make school more engaging for students. As students focus on where they may end up in a career, and find focus in school toward that goal, they may see more value in the classes that they are taking. School becomes a means to an end, rather than something that they just pass through.”
Kirby said students who complete a pathway will receive a unique cord to wear at graduation, as well as a notation on their transcript and in the graduation program.
Career Pathway options and coordinating cords are: health care occupations, red; business, brown; criminal justice, white; primary education, light blue; agriculture, green; manufacturing and construction, silver; and university pathway (OTM/College), purple.
Students enrolled in the program must complete required SHS courses, plus one optional from SHS or the online catalog; complete at least one Career experience with a minimum of 20 hours of experience; and complete a senior project/presentation showing what they did for their pathway and what they learned.
“I wanted to choose the pathways based on the ability we had to support the curriculum,” Kirby said. “We have added courses to support the pathways, but I also wanted to have a foundation already in place. In each of the pathways, we already had much of what we needed. We just added some depth to the offerings by adding a few classes, and by utilizing some online resources.”
Kirby hopes parents and students will find the pathways to be relevant, interesting, and cover a broad range of job types. He is open to creating new pathways as the program moves forward.
“As staff get to know students and their interests, they can encourage them toward these pathways, or at least toward a certain class to explore the topic,” Kirby said. Career Pathways was implemented thanks to funds received from the Willamette Promise Initiative regional grant.
“It allows teachers at the high school level a chance to work with college faculty in creating college level tests and activities,” he said. “If a student completes these activities at a high level, they then gain college credit for a very minimal fee of $30 for the year for all the credits they can get. It allows many more students to have access to college credits, and to understand what it takes to do college level work.”
Kirby said students on the university pathway can finish their entire first year of college in terms of credits while at SHS.
“We offer credit through Western Oregon, Chemeketa and LBCC currently, as well as several AP classes,” he said.
Other pathways offer students a hands-on approach to learning about careers that interest them, he added.
“We want students to attain all of the training and skills they can get, whether that leads them to college, trade school, the workplace, or other opportunities,” Kirby said.
New classes added to complement the Career Pathways program include: engineering, design, family and consumer science, graphic design, introduction to law, chemistry through the ages, and office intern.
“We are also expanding out AVENTA and other online courses to give students even more options,” he said.
“We are having a very good year here at SHS,” he added. “The staff has been working hard to help our students feel welcome and included, and we are doing all we can to teach students what they need to know as future citizens.”
