feature CTE
ACADEMIC or CTE? Gulfport Academic Institutes Offer Juniors and Seniors an Educational Experience That is a Blend of Both by Denise Sibley
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hen you click on the link to career and technical education (CTE) on Gulfport High School’s website, you see a link to academic institutes. This is not an error; it’s an innovative high school model— the only one of its kind in Mississippi. What distinguishes the academic institutes from other high school models is that they don’t treat academics and CTE as two separate entities. The two have blended to create an individualized educational experience for each and every junior and senior at Gulfport High School.
to engage all of their students, and CTE teachers demonstrate how their programs contribute to student academic achievement.
It has taken a focused, collaborative effort, said Fava. Teachers are required to be more creative than ever because the new program requires clear connections between academics and the world of careers. Students are provided with an academically challenging curriculum enhanced with realworld exposure to their area of interest. All students are assigned work-experience opportunities, such as seminars, According to David Fava, Director of Career and Techniproject-based learning, clinical observations, internships, cal Education, “Compression of the high school setting into and job shadowing. “All students get the flexibility to get four concurrent semesters allows students to get that base experience in a real-world setting and they get to experience level of information in those types of learning the content area and moments, and it is very ACADEMIC INSTITUTES AT GULFPORT HIGH SCHOOL provides the flexibilpowerful,” said Fava. ity that makes Gulfport CAB Institute very unique.” Gulfport High partners Communications, Arts, and Business includes Business Management with local businesses and Administration; Marketing, Sales and Service; Finance; Hospitality In their junior year, stuand organizations, such and Tourism; and Arts, Audio-visual Technology and Communications. dents choose to enroll as Garden Park Mediin one of the three acacal Center and Gulfport demic institutes: Health Main Street, to offer inHHS Institute and Human Services; ternship and mentoring Health and Human Services includes Health Sciences; Education and Communications, Arts, opportunities that match Training; Government and Public Administration; Law, Public Safety, and Business; or Science, the students’ career Corrections and Security; and Human Services. Technology, Engineerfields. Recently, GulfSTEM Institute ing, and Mathematics. port Main Street hosted Each institute has caa walking tour of GulfScience, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics includes Engineerreer clusters that cover port businesses, giving ing and Mathematics; Architecture and Construction; Transportation, a wide array of occupastudents the opportunity Distribution and Logistics; Manufacturing; Agriculture, Food and Nattions. According to Fava, to tour downtown busiural Resources; and Information Technology. “The academic institutes nesses and learn about allow students to get the experience that in the past was business operations, marketing, demographics, entrepreonly directly related to CTE.” In the new model, academic neurship, and advertising. More than half of the 100 stuteachers teach contextual applications, which allow them dents who participated would not have had this opportu22
CONNECTIONS Spring 2014