CANAJOHARIE — Canajoharie High School is preparing to offer Student Academies this fall as a way to provide students with opportunities for career exploration and skill development.
Students will be able to choose from a range of different academies designed to help guide their future career choices.
“You want kids to be interested in school,” high school Principal Nicholas Bottino said. “If you’re a teacher, the No. 1 thing you hear from students is ‘What are we learning this for?’, ‘What’s the point?’, so the academy program is designed to tap into student interest.”
Some of the academies will include digital communication, education, business, culinary arts, computer sciene internships, tech/trades and pre-college STEM.
The Digital Communication Academy will look to bridge the gap between technology and communication, while the education program will nurture the next generation of educators and mentors. The Business Academy will have a focus on cultivating budding entrepreneurs and business leaders, while culinary arts will hope to unleash creativity in the culinary world. The CSI Academy will delve into the dynamic field of computer science and technology, tech/trades will help students hone skills in various technical and trade professions, and the Pre-College/STEM Academy will have the goal of bridging high school and college — focusing on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Students will pick an academy in eighth grade. At the beginning of the year, they will be given a test to help discover career paths that might be right for them based on their personality, skill set and interests, Bottino said.
Academies will also help students define which elective classes they will take throughout high school, and each academy will offer college-level classes as well.
“A lot of kids just feel like college is too hard, or college isn’t for them,” Bottino said. “So by letting them take some college-in-the-high-school classes as part of every academy, we’re going to expose them to it, they get to leave here with college credits and they also get to see like, ‘Wow, this isn’t that hard, and I can do this.’ And that’s a big barrier for a lot of kids.”
The academies will also provide opportunities throughout students' time in high school to do different tours, work site visits and college visits in order to experience what life and jobs would look like on a daily basis. This culminates with students participating in an internship in 12th grade, Bottino said.
“By senior year, students are set up so they really only have to be in class a couple of hours a day,” Bottino said. “This leaves room for them to go out and get real work experience. It’s a great resume builder.”
The school met with parents last month to discuss the academies program. Bottino said it was well received by parents and students are very excited about it.
“Our program planning was actually last week, so our counselor went to the eighth grade and individually met with them,” Bottino said. “We had 31 kids sign up for an academy already out of 57 kids, so that’s already more than half that have signed up.”
Students often do not know what careers they could potentially explore, Bottino said. The academics are a great way to introduce students to different options available to them in their futures, he said.
“It doesn’t matter whether I’m talking to freshmen or I’m talking to seniors, the number of kids who tell me, ‘I have no idea what happens next’ is high,” Bottino said. “Most kids don’t have any idea what they are going to do next. I had no idea when I was in high school what I was going to do next. I think the reason for most kids is you really don’t know what’s out there.”
Academies allow students to get exposure to different options for future potential jobs and careers and leave high school with items on their resume and skills they can use, Bottino said.
“You want to hook a kid into something, to give them a reason to come to school,” Bottino said. “Just graduating isn't enough for most kids, so you have to make it real for them, and this is a good way to do that.”