LARNED — Career and Technical Education is well and growing at USD 495 in Larned.
Larned High School Principal Dustin Wilson on Thursday welcomed the Larned Chamber Coffee Hour audience gathered at the student lounge at LHS before introducing one planned and two established CTE programs offered to LSH students.
“For this presentation, we wanted to focus on the things we are doing really, really well,” Wilson said. “We have things going on all over our building that are benefiting kids in the community.
“Some of the more visible and tangible things that we are doing are coming from our career and tech ed staff,” Wilson noted “They are things that are currently ongoing or will be coming up next year.”
Julie Munden, Audio/Visual instructor
Julie Munden’s program began last fall. She began by working with graphic design instructor Brooke Stahlecker and English instructor Brady Keith before opening up her own classroom in January, at both the high school and middle school.
Munden worked for Barton Community College for 20 years in admissions and creating public relations videos.
“I’ve enjoyed revitalizing and having this program at the high school and middle school levels,” Munden said. She also creates content for the school district.
She presented a video compilation of events and activities since the beginning of the year, done by the students in her classroom.
“I tell my students that we’re not going to spend a lot of time listening to me lecture,” she said. “We are going to be doing things, hands-on, like podcasts, interviews, maybe localizing national events. They are allowed to use their phones in class.
“I’m trying to teach them that they can make money by this,” she said, holding up her cellphone.
“It can be their summer job; after school, and after high school.”
Munden said that, eventually, she would like to go out into the community and do commercials or student documentaries.
“I can’t wait to get started next year, when we’d do things like activities, theater, sports. I would love to bring students from Larned to a national conference with 3,000 other students across the country.”
Munden noted that she is already getting requests from the community for student projects.
Kristen Pontius and Brooke Stahlecker
Art instructor Kristen Pontius and Stahlecker are working to have a T-shirt shop in school.
“Not only does it give them the experience of the printing process, it gives them the experience of running an actual business,” Pontius said. The project is a natural merging of both teachers’ programs, with Pontius’ art and Stahlecker’s graphic design. “If you would go off and build your own graphic design business, you would be an entrepreneur, and students would need to know skills from both classes.
The program would be an independent study elective, with the instructors’ guidance, Stahlecker said.
It’s not a class that just everyone can enroll in, Stahlecker said. There is an application for the student to complete, along with two letters of recommendation.
“We are not looking at this as an opportunity to make money; if we do make a profit it’s going to go back into replenishing supplies and the leftover would go toward a scholarship. We’re not really trying to focus on moneymaking, but teaching the kids business skills.”
The teachers have already secured a vinyl cutter and heat press, and are working to find a space in the high school to set up in.
Adam Hewson, industrial arts
The construction and design pathway has been focused for the past three years on getting students prepared with certifications that enable them to enter the workforce, noted Adam Hewson, industrial arts instructor.
“My goal is to get them certified and go out and start a job,” he said. “Along those lines, we tied in with the National Center for Construction Education & Research (NCCER). It’s a huge national certification program that the state of Kansas has adopted. It’s the certification that colleges use. They get a card that says exactly what training they’ve had that they can take to construction companies, which can be scanned,” he said.
That gives students a leg up when applying for a job, Hewson noted.
There are two tiered classes, CORE and Carpentry I, with plans to add Cabinetmaking down the road, Hewson said. CORE is a required introductory class for the pathway, he said. It focuses on skills that industry and construction companies want their employees to have.
Hewson’s program has recently also tied in with Barton Community College through the Excel and CTE program that pays tuition for students in high school to take college classes. The classes are offered as dual-credit through BCC, Hewson said.
CORE and OSHA-10, a national safety training program, are offered through BCC’s plumbing program. “Most of the community colleges in the state use this program,” Hewson noted.
Before specializing in carpentry, electricity or plumbing, the CORE class is required.
“It’s a big first step in certification,” he noted.
This year, LHS had 59 students enrolled in CORE, with 37 as dual-credit through Barton and 46 completing certification at LHS.
Having the program available at the high school level is a big financial benefit for students, even if they aren’t planning to go into construction as a career, Hewson said. “If they take that dual-credit class while they are in high school, then they don’t have to pay for it later on.”
Hewson noted that LHS’s OSHA-10 program, which is required by many companies before stepping onto a construction site, has a 100% pass rate.
Hewson concluded by noting that the school’s drafting program is being offered as dual-credit through Hutchinson Community College. Two classes, Intro to Drafting and Construction CAD, can then take additional HCC-offered classes virtually. “They could get their whole Associate Degree free of charge through HCC while they are in high school,” he said. “That’s a really good tie-in we have there on the drafting side.”
