Trevon Ward, a senior at Aspen High School, received his private pilot’s license this month after taking aviation classes in the Aspen School District’s Career and Technical Education program.
At a breakfast meeting on Nov. 14, Ward told business leaders and school district staff that the program changed his life completely.
“I had no clue what I wanted to do,” Ward said. “I was not a great student. (I) found the aviation program. Through that program, my grades completely flipped, started putting my effort into school, really cared about school.”
Ward was among several students at Thursday’s advisory breakfast to share their experience in the CTE program, which includes several other subjects, including media, business, STEM, outdoor leadership, construction, and culinary arts.
Aspen School District staff occasionally host advisory meetings with local businesses to collect feedback on what experiences would be advantageous on the current job market, so they can offer students opportunities to ascertain those skills. Many of the industries represented in the program struggle to hire qualified candidates, especially in the Roaring Fork Valley.
The courses are designed in part to prepare graduates for various careers or to help them decide what they want to study in college. However, according to U.S. News and World Report, students in CTE programs also graduate at a higher rate than the national average and score better on some standardized tests.
After taking aviation classes, Ward said he went from getting B’s and C’s on his report card to all A’s.
Several of Ward’s classmates who spoke at Thursday’s breakfast said they discovered their dream career by taking CTE classes and plan to study the topic in college.
Audrey Woodrow, a senior, said her first computer science course was a CTE class. She liked the material enough to enroll in more advanced STEM courses. Luna Murray has received several certifications through her outdoor leadership class, which will help her work as a ski instructor when she returns home from college.
Sheri Smith, Aspen School District’s CTE director, said that the high school has offered vocational coursework for decades, but since she arrived in 2016, the programs have been approved by the state of Colorado, making them eligible for federal funding.
Financial support is critical since rural communities face several challenges in offering robust CTE programming.
The Aspen School District already struggles to fill its vacant staff positions, largely due to the cost of housing in Aspen and the greater Roaring Fork Valley. Finding qualified teachers who have industry experience outside of teaching is even harder.
Smith said it can be tough to attract working professionals into teaching roles.
“It is difficult when you have these professions, where if you're, say, a pilot, or somebody who is in an industry that's paying over $100,000 a year, you have to really have a passion and love for education to step into that role, into the educational side of it,” Smith said.
Colorado requires teachers of CTE courses to have the appropriate credential to receive funding from the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education grant, which creates another barrier to finding qualified teachers. However, Smith says there are fast tracks for working professionals to get teaching credentials without a traditional degree.
To overcome the challenges, ASD collaborates with Garfield Re-2, Lake County, and other rural Colorado school districts to gain insight from communities working on similar initiatives.
