Generations of students have gone through high school with a well-established notion of how their educational paths would lead.
Learn the essentials reading, writing, arithmetic prepare for college, and if theyve kept up their grades, avoided disciplinary issues, or had other life events, earn a diploma four years later.
The times, they are a changin.
Melissa Stiffler, guidance counselor at Iola High School, offers a jolting statistic for those who assume most high-schoolers are preparing for college. Of the 360 students enrolled at IHS, 41 took the American College Test (ACT).
Thats 41 kids in all four grades, Stiffler noted. And its only kids who are going to college take the ACT.
On top of that, this years senior class started with 108 students as freshmen. Its down to 74, as of Friday.
Thats pretty typical, she said, pointing to other schools across the state experiencing similar rates.
With that in mind, the state has placed an added emphasis on career and technical education. By 2021, the goal is to have every high school senior involved in some form of business internship, job shadow program or apprenticeship.
Iola High can count itself among those schools at the forefront. Of the 74 IHS seniors, more than half 47 are interning at local businesses, Allen County Regional Hospital or at an elementary school.
Were at 50 percent participation, so were ahead of the game, Stiffler said. A lot of schools arent doing anything at all yet.
THE HIGH schools internship program is the final step in the schools career technology education pathway handbook, a guide that assists students through their individual plan of study. It prescribes which courses a student is required to take to graduate English, math, science, social science, etc. plus pathway courses geared to an individual career.
A student seeking an engineering career, for example, might be best served with a robotics course, or a computer integrated management program.
The state has developed 34 such pathways; Iola High offers 19, incredible for a school our size, Stiffler said.
With those pathways in place, educators realize hands-on learning is most effective in certain specialized fields.
Thats where the internships come in.
Fifteen area businesses or other entities, such as Allen Community College, Allen County Regional Hospital and the Iola Police Department have agreed to use a student intern on a regular basis, for at least a few hours a day. The hours, and days, vary.
We have kids out there pretty much every hour of the day, Stiffler said, aside from their regular seminar classes at mid-day.
