February is Career and Technical Education Month in Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and Gov. Scott Walker have declared February as Career and Technical Education Month. Career and technical education combines rigorous academics and technical education to fuel innovation for future job creation and to support anticipated workforce needs.

Experiential learning and access to postsecondary credits while still in high school are other important career and technical education components. These components are the cornerstone of the School District of New Berlin’s plan to prepare all graduates to be college and career ready.

Career and technical education is a critical part of accomplishing the SDNB’s college-and-career-ready initiative designed to support all students regardless of their chosen path after high school. All students are exposed to career and technical education through a continuum of experiences throughout their K-12 education to ensure they can achieve their personal, academic, social and career goals.

“We provide students with as many career and technical opportunities as we can so that each and every student leaves our district both well-educated and equipped with the skills and dispositions that will help them land jobs and start their careers,” Superintendent Joe Garza said.

SDNB students are encouraged to take advantage of some of the more personalized career and technical education programs that have been developed to allow students to explore and develop skills in specific areas of interest such as manufacturing, health science, education, engineering (Project Lead the Way), construction and skilled trades, information technology, business, computer science and more. Additionally, the district recently launched an entrepreneurial skills accelerator to support students think and solve challenging problems differently.

The district collaborates with a variety of business and postsecondary education institutions to ensure rigorous and relevant experiences for all program participants.

“Thanks to our tremendous staff, along with our partners’ support, we are able to help students personalize their learning with the likes of career days, industry tours, technical coursework, industry certifications, college in high school programming, internships and much more,” Garza added. “All students are CTE students if we want them to graduate truly college and career ready.”

The SDNB will celebrate CTE Month throughout February on Facebook and Twitter. Follow along for great stories about the district’s CTE successes. Additionally, the district has created this YouTube video, “Planning for Life After High School,” to help students understand that their future plans should be as unique as they are.