DAYTON — Local school districts are getting ready to head back to class.
News Center 7’s Letitia Perry sat down with the superintendent of the region’s largest school district about the new Career Pathway Program at Dayton Public high schools.
This is not a new program, but the program has been expanded to include every high school in the district this year. Students choose an academic pathway that gives them an early jump on their chosen career.
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Khyleah Carter, a senior at Meadowdale High School, said, “It’s letting me gather information that I would need in the real world, so I just think it’s an overall great experience.”
The hallways at Meadowdale Career Tech may look typical, but students quickly find the classrooms are anything but typical.
In the nursing area, there are medical beds, patient dummies, instruments and tools, all to teach students the ins and outs of an operating room under the surgical tech pathway.
Ciara Lewis, Surgical Technology Teacher at Meadowdale CTC, said, “What it’s like to assist the surgeon, sterility, and instruments safe for patients.”
Another classroom teaches robotics. Meadowdale CTC engineering students have even competed on a national level, using their own projects.
Dr. Eddie Davis, Principal at Meadowdale CTC, said, “Students are creating everything from the motherboard to be able to operate it to the controller.”
The superintendent of Dayton Public Schools is an alum and remembers attending the career academy. There was also Patterson High School, which was one of the only two places in the 80s that offered hands-on professional training at the time.
Dr. David Lawrence said, “Researchers came from Europe, unprecedented, career academy so to speak.”
Today, Dr. Lawrence is a big fan of this all-inclusive pathway project because students get hands-on training in a variety of career fields. Students will still take core classes that are required by the state to graduate.
“If you’re in cosmetology, we can connect mathematics, chemistry, physics to cosmetology; it tends to be more interesting, more palatable.”
There are so many benefits to pathways, including improved attendance and early certifications, allowing graduates to begin work immediately.
Principal Davis said whether students plan to attend college, a trade school, or enter the workforce, “It all comes down to preparing them for life after high school.”
There are dozens of “pathways” available, such as cosmetology and barbering, the art of braiding, media arts, entrepreneurship, engineering, automotive, musicianship, and criminal justice, to name a few.
For more information on this program, Click Here.
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