Aberdeen High’s CTE classes preparing local students for future employment

Not all students take the traditional four-year college path after high school, and few places embrace that like Aberdeen High School and its Career Technical Education offerings.

During one afternoon last week, one classroom is full of students practicing their sign language class for an upcoming song performance, while across the hall in a workshop are electrical engineering students hard at work on personal building projects.

In the school’s auto shop, senior Tanner Jones has been working on a car engine overhaul. Jones said he originally joined the auto repair class because he needed the course credit, but now says he wants to be a mechanic after graduating.

“I just needed a CTE credit so I signed up for the first-year class, and I really liked it and kept doing it — it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “I want to get into heavy diesel mechanics, work on bulldozers, excavators and stuff.”

Jones recently won a regional automotive competition and said he looks forward to attending the state-level competition in April. While this is the only CTE class Jones has taken, some take more, and use it the hands-on courses to explore what they’d like to do after graduating.

Michaela Leach, a junior, has participated in radio classes, engineering and photography. Although she no longer wants to be a professional radio DJ, she values the skills she learned hosting in the early hours before school starts.

“I realized that’s not exactly what I want to do with my future,” she said. “It’s more fun, but it has helped with my interviewing, talking to people and building my confidence.”

Lynn Green, the school’s CTE director, guessed that about 60 percent of students from Aberdeen High School go on to some form of standard two- or four-year college.

There are some different categories within the CTE classes, which have been around 11 years. In 2010, the school added skill center courses, which last about three hours and accept students from any of the 10 nearby school districts such as Montesano, Ocosta and Hoquiam. These students drive themselves to Aberdeen in the afternoon for their longer skills class, after spending the mornings taking standard academic courses.

These courses include criminal justice, electrical engineering, auto repair, cosmetology and medical training.

Students in these skills classes can also get an upper hand when it comes to job preparation and employer connections. For example, Grays Harbor Hospital offers mock interviews for medical school and partners with the high school to assign patients to students.

The school also has its own branch of TwinStar Credit Union, which allow students to work as bank tellers as part of the Advanced Banking and Finance course. Each year, TwinStar hires two high school students for a one-year paid internship at either its Aberdeen or Hoquiam branches.

There are four former students who then went on to get full- or part-time jobs at TwinStar, according to Kyndal Dickinson, who manages the school’s credit union and teaches banking. For some successful students, she has been impressed with the financial difference the program has made.

“We have a young man in Utah who was in the program five or six years ago, and he’s probably making twice what I make in a year,” said Dickinson. “This program gave him direction in life, and he took it and ran with it.”

There’s not a ton of action in the high school bank (open 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday), and Dickinson said there’s usually between four and six transactions each day. While it is a big shift from high school to the real thing, Dickinson said most students awarded internships settle in well.

“There’s a huge difference between what we do volume-wise of course,” she said. “But they go to the normal one week of training and have plenty of support of the staff members.”

Even if some students don’t enjoy the CTE classes they’re in, Green still thinks it’s worthwhile for them to realize what fields those are, and their CTE programs strive to offer overall beneficial skills to support them after high school.

“In all our programs, we try to have skills transitional into any field they may want to go into. Exposing them to building leadership skills, communication skills, work ethic, meeting deadlines — all those soft skills employers want — we try to make sure those are embedded in everything we do.”