Career Edge A Top Priority at MUSD
District receives a grant to develop a career-focused curriculum that prepares students for both work and college.
By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer
Young people graduating high school to enter the “real world” may soon be armed with not just a diploma, but also some knowledge of what it takes to survive on-the job.
Montebello Unified School District educators, flush with a $125,000 planning grant that was awarded to only nine other districts in California, are devising ways to teach academic subjects within a real world career context.
For example, a student interested in manufacturing may be assigned a research paper on manufacturing in English class.
“The intent is so that students experience real world application in that particular career field. It ensures relevancy…” says Paul Gothold, the district’s Director of Curriculum and Instruction for grades 9-12.
One of the goals set out in the district’s application for the grant is to improve high school graduation rates. The types of hands-on programs being planned would provide additional opportunities to students who may not excel in strictly academic courses, Gothold says.
The district is starting small, with academies in at least three areas: transportation, science engineering, and manufacturing.
The grant was provided by ConnectEd, a nonprofit organization that is promoting college prep curriculum that also furthers a student’s career aspirations.
This grant funds the district’s planning efforts, which includes meeting with the community to determine curriculum priorities and needs, as well as creating partnerships with businesses and colleges.
MUSD will use the grant, along with state funding, to develop existing vocational programs in the district into learning “pathways” for careers in areas such as healthcare, transportation, arts and design, and the culinary arts. The state has designated a total of 15 different industry sectors that it’s pathways could be geared toward.
Career pathways are being developed for all of its high schools, including the Applied Technology Center that’s scheduled to open in September 2010.
Through pathway programs, students gain access to resources at community colleges and four-year universities and have opportunities to obtain hands-on experience in a work environment.
These programs are meant to prepare students for careers and encourage transition to college. The pathways curriculum is designed to qualify students for college A-G requirements.
Unlike traditional vocational education programs that are set on a track separate from academic education, the pathways programs are meant to keep students competitive in not just a career environment but also in an academic one.
If the district uses the grant successfully, it will be eligible next spring for an implementation grant. This private grant from a non-profit foundation supplement’s the district’s other grants obtained from the state, where the idea of pathway curriculums is also gaining support.
“We’re now hearing the same message from the state… college prep and work-readiness is now synonymous,” Gothold says.
Vocational education has taken a backseat to academic education in recent decades, so the push to bring back and rework career technical education is exciting news to Schurr High School’s auto shop teacher Armando Hernandez.
“You have the academically inclined… and then you have everyone else — students who are hands on. There really should be a marriage of both,” he says.
“If we can get pathways running… I think it’s a win-win.”
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December 11, 2008 Copyright © 2010 Eastern Group Publications, Inc.
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