Dear Thompson School District Students, Parents, Staff and Community Members,
To open the month of October, Thompson School District symbolically broke ground at the new Career and Technical Education (CTE) Center at the Van Buren campus. I mention that this was a symbolic groundbreaking, as work is already well underway to transform the facility into a state-of-the-art venue to expand and grow our already successful CTE programs here in our district. Today, I would like to provide some information on what I like to call the “three P’s of CTE:” Pathways, Partnerships and Programming.
TSD is excited about the development of the four career pathways to be offered at the new CTE Center, which is opening in the fall semester of 2020. The pathways are Advanced Manufacturing, Computer Science, Construction Skilled Trades and Health Care.
We have met and listened to local business and industry members by holding numerous advisory committee sessions to build out and develop these two-year program pathways. Each pathway will offer at least one industry credential, college credit (Aims Community College and Front Range Community College), and core academic credit in English, math and/or science. Each pathway will also contain a work-based learning opportunity such as an internship or apprenticeship, as well as multiple exit points for students to join the workforce, whether as a high school graduate, while taking industry specific college courses or as a college graduate.
We also heard from our community about the importance of soft, or essential, skills for our students in developing their career, college and community readiness. This matches well with Strive 2025 and our Portrait of a TSD Graduate. Embedded in all courses will be the four C’s: Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking and Creativity. Self-advocacy and citizen competencies will also be applied within courses and mastered upon completion of the work-based learning component in each pathway.
Finally, we will continue to look at developing and creating pathways for students at our middle and elementary school sites to explore CTE programming and learn more about opportunities that will exist as they move from our elementary to secondary schools.
As we prepare our students to be college, career and community ready, we are also mindful that the CTE program will create authentic and meaningful experiences that will serve them well as they graduate from TSD and head into future endeavors. We once again thank you for your support and trust in the work that we are doing. We recognize that the generosity of our community through the passage of last year’s Bond and Mill initiatives has allowed us to offer programming and experiences for our students that will serve them well in the future. We see our work within CTE not only as a way to support our students, but also as a way to give back to our community by creating a highly skilled and talented workforce.
We are excited and energized by the work ahead!
Sincerely,
Dr. Marc Schaffer
Superintendent of Schools
Thompson School District