In this episode of the Sage Studio podcast, host Tiffiny Webster is joined by two guests, Traci King, HS Principal, and Laura Glaviota, HS Assistant Principal, The topic of discussion is Sage Oak's Career Technical Education (CTE) programs. CTE stands for Career Technical Education and refers to a sequence of courses aligned with a student's interest and intended to prepare them for specific careers. Sage Oak offers three pathways: Child Development, Sports Medicine, and Arts, Media and Entertainment. Each pathway consists of courses that provide students with the necessary skills for their chosen career.
The inspiration behind implementing CTE programs at Sage Oak was the recognition of a clear disconnect between traditional education pathways and the practical skills that businesses expect from college graduates. Traci shares a statistic that only 11% of business leaders believed that college graduates were prepared to enter the workforce. To bridge this gap, Sage Oak introduced CTE programs to provide students with applicable skills that employers value.
The CTE programs at Sage Oak differ from those in traditional brick and mortar schools due to the flexibility of the independent study model. Students can adapt their learning schedules to accommodate their commitments and engage with the content when they are most receptive. Additionally, Sage Oak has the ability to change CTE programs quickly to keep up with industry changes.
Laura explains how the CTE courses are integrated into students' regular schedules. These courses fulfill graduation requirements and, in some cases, meet A-G requirements for students planning to attend a four-year college in California. By strategically selecting CTE courses, students can satisfy elective credit requirements while gaining expertise in a specific field of study for post-high school endeavors.
Technology plays a crucial role in Sage Oak's CTE programs. Students gain real-world experience and certifications through hands-on activities and the use of up-to-date technology. For example, in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment pathway, students earn industry-recognized certifications in Adobe and Illustrator. In the Child Development program, students use computer-chipped "babies" to monitor their interactions and receive feedback on their caregiving skills.
Overall, Sage Oak's CTE programs aim to prepare students for the workforce by providing them with practical skills and industry experience. The flexibility of the independent study model allows students to customize their learning schedules while fulfilling graduation and college entrance requirements. To learn more about Sage Oak and our CTE programs, visit www.sageoak.education.
Thank you for listening to the Sage Studio podcast presented by Sage Oak Charter Schools and hosted by Tiffiny Webster, M.A.Ed. We invite you to follow the show and leave your review below. Sage Oak Charter Schools is an independent study nonclassroom based TK-12 personalized learning public charter school serving students in Southern California. Visit sageoak.education for more information.
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In this episode of the Sage Studio podcast, host Tiffiny Webster is joined by two guests, Traci King, HS Principal, and Laura Glaviota, HS Assistant Principal, The topic of discussion is Sage Oak's Career Technical Education (CTE) programs. CTE stands for Career Technical Education and refers to a sequence of courses aligned with a student's interest and intended to prepare them for specific careers. Sage Oak offers three pathways: Child Development, Sports Medicine, and Arts, Media and Entertainment. Each pathway consists of courses that provide students with the necessary skills for their chosen career.
The inspiration behind implementing CTE programs at Sage Oak was the recognition of a clear disconnect between traditional education pathways and the practical skills that businesses expect from college graduates. Traci shares a statistic that only 11% of business leaders believed that college graduates were prepared to enter the workforce. To bridge this gap, Sage Oak introduced CTE programs to provide students with applicable skills that employers value.
The CTE programs at Sage Oak differ from those in traditional brick and mortar schools due to the flexibility of the independent study model. Students can adapt their learning schedules to accommodate their commitments and engage with the content when they are most receptive. Additionally, Sage Oak has the ability to change CTE programs quickly to keep up with industry changes.
Laura explains how the CTE courses are integrated into students' regular schedules. These courses fulfill graduation requirements and, in some cases, meet A-G requirements for students planning to attend a four-year college in California. By strategically selecting CTE courses, students can satisfy elective credit requirements while gaining expertise in a specific field of study for post-high school endeavors.
Technology plays a crucial role in Sage Oak's CTE programs. Students gain real-world experience and certifications through hands-on activities and the use of up-to-date technology. For example, in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment pathway, students earn industry-recognized certifications in Adobe and Illustrator. In the Child Development program, students use computer-chipped "babies" to monitor their interactions and receive feedback on their caregiving skills.
Overall, Sage Oak's CTE programs aim to prepare students for the workforce by providing them with practical skills and industry experience. The flexibility of the independent study model allows students to customize their learning schedules while fulfilling graduation and college entrance requirements. To learn more about Sage Oak and our CTE programs, visit www.sageoak.education.
Thank you for listening to the Sage Studio podcast presented by Sage Oak Charter Schools and hosted by Tiffiny Webster, M.A.Ed. We invite you to follow the show and leave your review below. Sage Oak Charter Schools is an independent study nonclassroom based TK-12 personalized learning public charter school serving students in Southern California. Visit sageoak.education for more information.
Sage Oak Website
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
Well, welcome to another episode of Sage Studio. I am Tiffiny Webster, and today I am joined by two guests from our high school department. I am so excited to have them on the podcast so that we can talk all about Sage Oak, CTE programs. I'm going to let them introduce themselves and explain a little about what our CTE programs are. So first, let's start with Traci. Welcome, Traci. Thank you Tiffiny. Thank you for having me back. I always love doing these podcasts with you and this time, I mean, we get to have a topic that is so exciting because I love everything about CTE and. What is even more exciting about the program itself is having somebody that is also equally excited about CTE so we have our new Assistant Principal Laura here with us today as well. Love it. Welcome, Laura. We are so glad to have you here on the podcast. Thank Tiffiny I'm so excited to be here on, I've heard so much about the Sage Oak podcast. I'm happy to join. And I'm so to be at Sage Oak and to have this conversation about CTE something near and dear to heart and share our students and families. Well, I know that they're eager to dive into this conversation. So first, for all of our listeners who might not be familiar with CTE first, tell us about what that acronym even stands for so we're talking about C T E, we're talking about career technical education courses, and you'll, you'll hear the term CTE pathway, and that's because these courses are a sequence. So they're generally a sequence of two or more. classes And they're supposed to align with a student's interest. So they're supposed to be connecting to college industries career and really honing in on a student's particular interest At Sage Oak, we have three specific pathways, our Child Development pathway, our Sports Medicine pathway, and our Arts, Media and Entertainment pathway. Okay, so those the pathways that we have are specific to those different careers, and each of those different career paths have a accumulation of courses that will help students be prepared for those classes. You got it. Okay. Awesome. So tell me Traci, I'm going to ask you, I know we're always trying to innovate, always trying to add new things to the program. What is the inspiration behind the initiation of all these CTE programs? Well, when we first considered imple implementing C T E programs at our school, one of the driving factors was a rather alarming statistics. We found that only about 11% of business leaders strongly believed that college graduates were prepared to enter the workforce. Oh, wow. That's alarmingly low. We recognize that there was a clear disconnect between traditional education pathways and the practical skills and knowledges businesses expected from young professionals entering the workforce. So this gap highlighted an urgent need to integrate career focused education earlier in a student's journey. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So our C T E program was born out of this necessity to bridge the gap between academic learning and real world professional readiness. And we wanted our students to graduate with applicable skills that employers value right off the bat. So important. Things always look different when you're in an independent study model like Sage Oak. So tell me a little bit about how do our C T E programs look in our model as compared to how they might look in a traditional brick and mortar school model. Oh, certainly. When we look into our CTE program in like our Sage Oak non-classroom based independent high school compared to the traditional brick and mortar ones, some benefits of our model is the unparalleled flexibility that we have to offer our students so they can adapt their learning schedules around their commitments. You know, if it's recreational activities, responsibilities with their families, personal projects, anything that they're working on. So the flexibility not only caters to the diverse learning styles, but also allows students to engage with the content when they are most receptive, which can be a game changer in terms of retention and application. And we have the ability to change our CTE programs a lot quicker than those necessarily at at brick and mortar high school. So as the industry changes, then we change along with it. Yeah, I could see that. I could see how our model really yields to that ability to be flexible and continue to kind of ebb and flow as needed for either the changing industry or the needs of the students. So, that's a really good point. And Laura, I know you were talking about our three different strands, which are the Child Development, the Sports Medicine, and the Arts and Media. So, explain to our listeners, so how then do you integrate those CTE courses into their regular schedule and how do we do that in a way that kind of helps to keep that flexibility by also keeping them on track. I mean, how does all that work? this was thought about from the very conception of C T E about how do you. Integrate into a course sequence. How do you integrate it into a high school four year plan, and what does that look like? And so for us at Sage Oak, it means that you are getting required credit both graduation and often A through G credit when you're taking a C T E course. So you have to take electives to graduate both for high school graduation and A through G. So if you're planning on going to a four year college in California you need to take a, a good number of elective credits. And this CTE requirement meets that. For Sage Oak, we have a C T E or VAPA requirement, and this meets this as well. And so it is already integrated into the four year plan. So, while there's plenty of good electives out there, this is one that meets a multitude of requirements and also integrates that college and career readiness skills. I think that sometimes students might feel like, oh no, this is something extra I have to do on top of all the work that I need to do in order to graduate. So it's good to know that actually by being a little bit strategic, by working with your EA to select your electives, you could actually choose electives that our meeting the elective requirements for graduation, while at the same time they are walking you down this path to gain some familiarity in a concentrated area of study to prepare you for those next steps for outside of high school. So great to know that, that students can really maximize their credits here through this process. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about technology. So how is technology integrated into these programs, especially again in our non-classroom based independent study world? How does that work? I. So that's part of CTE right? We want them to get that real world experience. What is the current up-to-date technology that you'd be using in the workforce? And how do we give our students exposure and opportunities to experience that? And that's what we're doing. So, even with our model, students are getting certifications, hands-on experience. With our our Arts, Media, and Entertainment pathway they are getting the Adobe and Illustrator certification, which is a industry recognized certification and our sports medicine, they're getting kids delivered to their home, that they're getting to experience the hands-on taping and wrapping part of that process. Traci, do you want to speak to the technology that's there in the child development program for a minute? I know that you were kind of, integral in bringing that piece of technology into that program. so what is so exciting about that, these babies, the the real babies as they're called, they have a computer chip in them and it monitors everything. How the student is interacting with this baby at home. So did they keep their head tilted correctly while they were feeding 'em? How long did they let them cry? How often was their diaper changed? So it, it monitors everything and it has a report that it shows back to the student. it really does integrate the technology in a very unique way, and I think all of that data is really important for students to see too, so that they can measure their success in that simulation. So, it's great to see that that's a way that technology is being incorporated into something like childcare, where you wouldn't necessarily associate that with technology. Okay, so we have covered so much already, and there's still so much more that I want to make sure that our listeners know about when it comes to the C T E program. So we talked a little bit about the benefits to the students learning these career skills earning certificates potentially that they could take with them beyond high school into the workforce. We talked about how these classes can count towards electives that they need for high school credit already. So they're just maximizing the time that they have while they are in high school. Talk to us a little bit about post high school, what are some of the benefits and the outcomes of graduating with the CTE experience Once students are in the workforce or ready to go to college, how does this play a role? Well, I'm really glad you asked this question actually, , because CTE has been around for a little bit, the California Department of Education released some new data on this, and so they recently shared that 79% of students who completed a program are likely to go straight into to college, which is amazing. They also came out to find out that they're more likely to have a higher GPA in college and be successful your freshman year, And then of course there is the benefit of your work experience, so you're more likely to go into a higher paying job right out of high school as well. I think that's really important for our students and our parents to know about is that in addition to just learning the actual skillset, the practice of working towards a goal and the practice of being committed towards a certain pathway and continuing to progress and increase your knowledge in a subject matter, has all of these other, wonderful benefits, which is the preparation students have for doing well in a college program or doing well into a job straight out of high school. So it's really great to see that that's another component of this program. Okay. Traci, talk to me a little bit about collaboration because we want our students to not only have these skills, but if we can hand them off to a great internship or to a great job or to a great college, that is even better. So, what do our Sage Oak collaborations with other businesses and partners within the community, what does that look like for our graduating students? This part is so exciting because we're working with this company. It's a nonprofit called Launch, and they connect high school students and community college students to local businesses. For example, after taking our College and Career Readiness classes, students like, you know, Hey, I'm really interested in automotive repair, especially for electric cars. And they take an intro class with Riverside Community College. They connect with Launch, and then Launch gives us the assistance to placing them in a paid apprenticeship or internship with companies such as Honda and Toyota. And usually we think of like apprenticeships with like building and construction trades. However, the Launch Apprentice Network, they've modernized this apprenticeship by integrating the Earn and learn system into the institutions of higher education. And so there's like this organic link between employers seeking the talent supply and students and job seekers looking for the opportunities and schools are the natural connection for them both. So important for actually launching students. It's a great name for it because that is really the whole point. We're trying to give students this runway of how do they get to the career that they want to have better and faster. So really nice to have the support of that. Okay. How does that then play into the Capstone courses? Where's the connection there? So that would be the capstone course. So our capstone courses are largely internships, work experience, apprenticeships, they're project based. They'll be working for our art students and working on a portfolio. They'll also be studying for and taking exams such as the Adobe Suites, getting their certificate or InDesign certificates. So it is a combination of all of these things that make them much more ready to face the workforce when they leave high school. Got it. It's so great. It's so comprehensive. For that reason, I mean, I can imagine that this is becoming more and more popular for our students. Are there plans to expand the CTE offerings here at Sage Oak? I don't even think that we'll ever stop expanding are kind of on our immediate horizon. Okay. Because we already have, you know, some Computer Science classes, AP Computer Science class that's in-house now. So we're looking to really develop our IT, Computer Science and our Gaming pathway. So many scholarships out there now for Gaming and there's a large, large industry that surrounds all of the Gaming pathway and everything that's involved in it. Our Healthcare pathway may be two years away, but we're looking for our Computer Science and our Gaming one for next year. Wow, that is super exciting. I know that that one's going to be a big hit because as you mentioned, not only is just, just a fun industry that people love to be a part of, but the fact that eSports are really becoming something that is recognized both at the collegiate level and at the professional level, really does make it have a place in the market for, for jobs and, and careers going forward. So, very exciting. Okay, Laura, I'm going to go back to you and let's talk about prospective students. What would. Your advice be for any prospective student that's considering enrolling in one of the C T E programs here at sjo. For any prospective student, I think the best advice is just to jump all in. I think sometimes students can be hesitant of, you know, I'm not sure what I want to do when I graduate and, and if I take this course, am I going to have to become a doctor? You know, or whatever it might be. And, and, no, that's not true. By, by taking this opportunity, you are showing commitment, that you're showing that you're willing to try something new, that you're getting an. Experience to develop those college and career readiness skills. So you're going to be more prepared to take whatever next step that you choose to take after high school and beyond. But also that, you know, if you're a little hesitant or a little nervous, I'd also say that being in the CTE course in a pathway, you're in the C T E program and that comes with more than just being in a class. It comes with the comradery of going with a group of students through this experience. It comes with the instructors who are, you know, taking you on special field trips for the C T E program. And it comes with extending your learning from outside of the classroom. So, if a prospective student is interested, my best advice is just to, just to try it, just to take a course and give it your best and jump all in and have a good time. I think that's such good advice. I really do.'cause for all the reasons that you mentioned, okay. Where is the first step for them if they want to find out more information about the programs and kind of look over the classes? Where should students start? Well, this is a great resource and I, I also think that you know, really their EAs are the best. First point of contact. We have such incredible Educational Advisors who are deeply passionate about helping students find the right courses and the best opportunities. I am also always available as a resource for students who want to talk about C T E and possible paths and planning as well as , our college counselor Coral. So start with their EAs and, and lean on the other resources that we have. Good. Good to know. Laura, are there any misconceptions about the C T E program that you want to debunk? Any myths out there that you think that students might need to know about before they might have a misconception about the program? One that I've heard a couple times from students is that they think that CTE is a program that's only for students who don't plan on attending a two or four year university. Hmm. the benefit of participating in completing a C T E pathway is for all students. So one of the good things about this experience is if you continue on with your interest, if you go through this Child Development pathway and you want to become a preschool teacher. You've already taken a lot of, the work and possibly even the community college class. So you have that knowledge base and that skillset, and so you are more prepared to jump straight into your major. So I think that's one that I always just like to highlight is that the CTE program really is for everybody. Traci as we wrap up here, kind of give us some final thoughts about how our CTE programs fit into the overall mission and vision of the school, because I know we always want to continue to stay true to our Sage Oak core values. So how does this align with our Sage Oak core values? Yeah, lines perfectly. Our mission is educating students, their personalized and collaborative learning approach, empowering them to lead purposeful and productive lives. And the courses really lean into the empowering students as part of our mission. So when you take a class that's specifically designed to equip you with the skills, And gives you an opportunity to practice those skills, you'll become confident and empowered. And of course, we want our empowered and highly trained students to use their skills to impact their communities, which connects to the vision of our school, which is Sage Oak students embrace their unique potential and are inspired to positively impact their communities. So perfect, isn't it? It just blends right together. It does. It really does. And again, I think that's why we continue to grow as a school and bring in new families because our programs are not stagnant. They are always growing as our core values say they will and do. And it's really great to continue to have all of these offerings for our students. Well, I cannot thank you both enough for joining me today on the podcast and giving us that wealth of knowledge about the CTE offerings here at Sage Oak. I think it's really exciting. for us as a school, I think it's even more exciting for the possibilities for our students to really help them discover what they're passionate about, what they're interested in, or maybe what they're really good at that they just, you know, didn't know until they had a chance to really explore on this deeper level. So, excited to see what comes of this program. Always love to hear what's going on with your programs over there in high school. So thanks so much for joining me today and we'll link any information that our parents or students might need to the show notes below so that you can find out more information on our CTE programs. All right, thanks Laura. Thanks Traci. Always good to see you guys. Thank You.