Carter Giegerich
for The Franklin Press
Macon County Schools is offering a new set of summer programs this year, with a focus on expanding career and technical education (CTE) services.
The Summer Career Activator Camps introduce students in sixth grade and up to a variety of the courses available through the CTE program in Macon County, with everything from welding to cooking to flying offered during the three-day camps.
“Summer camps are usually for academics, reading and math or summer school,” said Christy Barnett, the on-site administrator for the camps. “With these camps, students have the opportunity to take things that interest them.”
The summer camps will have a hands-on feel, Barnett said, with opportunities for students to visit local businesses and see how those career skills are put into practice in the real world, with the hope that the camp experience hooks students, and they will continue into one of the CTE program pathways in the coming school year.
“In the CTE classes, they’re actually going to be welding and cooking and working on cars,” Barnett said. “There are field trips they’re wanting to take – ‘Learn to Fly’ is planning to go to the Asheville airport, ‘Fast and Furious’ is trying to go to several dealerships and talk to mechanics. It’s hands-on, and it gets kids interested in these classes that are offered.”
The camps are run by teachers from Macon County’s CTE program, offering students a chance to meet with potential career mentors before they take the plunge into a training program through their schools. Barnett said this gives teachers a chance to build relationships with students early on, improving participation in the CTE classes.
“They’ll be using our cooking lab, the welding lab, the bays where we do our auto mechanics – those teachers are doing these camps,” Barnett said. “They get to meet the teachers, and that’s a way for teachers to recruit students, especially younger ones, to have an interest in their program and to select those electives later on.”
Some CTE courses are only available to upperclassmen, and Barnett said these camps could serve as a way to get students interested early on and maintain their interest while they’re not yet old enough to participate in the more advanced classes.
“These camps help them have goals, to get to the automotive classes and welding classes where they can earn their certificates that will help them get a job or help with going to college,” she said.
According to FHS Curriculum Instructional Management Coordinator Josh Brooks, the CTE camps and courses during the school year provide students with valuable opportunities for hands-on learning in a practical field.
“The goal of any career and technical education class is to give the kids a baseline knowledge of particular skills, things they would need in that specific class, and then to apply that with hands-on learning,” Brooks said. “It’s all about the actual hands-on, application side and not just sitting and listening or learning by memorization.”
Brooks said the CTE program at Franklin High School is seeing record enrollment, and he expects that trend to continue next year.
“Participation is at an all-time high from an enrollment standpoint for all of our CTE classes,” Brooks said. “Some of that has to do with us having a very large freshman class, and there’s another large freshman class behind them coming up.”
“It’s more than just the class itself, to say the least,” Brooks said. “There’s a number of students graduating this year with these credentials and certificates.”
Sign-up for the camps will remain open until May 31. Parents wishing to register or seeking more information can contact Christy Barnett at christy.barnett@macon.k12.nc.us.