Welcome to the next episode of the Inside Wisetta podcast. Today we are talking about the referendum which is coming up on April 14th. If those listening are not aware, go to vote.weeistoschools.org and we are talking about CTE and we have three very special guests joining us today to talk about CTE. We have Tyler Shepard who is an associate principal here at the high school. We have Don Johnson who is an English teacher, CTE instructional coordinator, compass instructor and instructional coach which is a lot. >> And Scott Torter who is the CT guy. So do you want to elaborate on that at all Scott? >> I I would love to. Last year, the opportunity presented itself for me to be very thoughtful about connecting with our CT students at our middle schools and give them some information to help them with the transition from grades 8 to this great big building. Um, that that's a big transition and if I was an eighth grader, I would be very nervous about that transition. So, what I wanted to do again when the opportunity presented itself was to give our students as much information as possible on where they can find a home inside of our career and technical education programming. And by the second period of the day when I was at Central Middle School, I had the opportunity to be in a class with a student first block and then also second. And then they said with with some degree of affection, so that's why it stuck, CTE guy is here again. So that's when I kind of if the shoe fit then I decided I would wear it. So that's when I became CTE guy. >> That's great. I love that. We're just going to go with it. And it is it's in your email signature too. I would know when you email Scott it says CTE guy. So then I know I'm emailing the right the right Scott. >> Um so before we get into the specifics for the referendum. Um and we've done a couple episodes on CT. So for those listening who have not listened to those, you can find them in the podcast feed. Scott, what is CT? I >> think one of one of the things that we've been really trying to inform our students and our community about is that exact topic. For those of us about my age, we'll probably think about when we had like a shop class and that's probably when we built things out of wood and then maybe we had like what we would call a home class and we learned how to sew and cook. um that landscape has shifted so much since the time in which I was in high school and that was a really long time ago. Um so maybe if we back up five years at least for Weisetta programming it might be helpful to build a foundation on what is career and technical education. So five years ago we started the process of taking what is health science, family consumer science, business and technology education and putting them under the umbrella referred to as CTE or career and technical education. And we did that from a a better way to serve the needs of our learners and our community. And that's kind of forward- facing or front of house language. And it allows our learners to find a career pathway and to explore it. And then if that's really what lights their fire, they can take an intro, intermediate, and advanced and capstone level program inside of there really to help students understand what it is that they're learning here in our programs and how it fits to careers outside of here. And maybe another um part that has value again when we're talking with the students that we serve and our community is CTE is really that experientialbased learning that helps our students understand again like how can we take math and put it inside of let's say like instruction. So we really understand the relevance of everything that we're doing because we're we're learning while we're actively engaged in our curriculum inside of CTE. So before we dive more into CT specifically, I'm going to go to you, Tyler. Looking at the the website for the referendum, it mentions there's anticipated nine it's anticipated there'll be 900 additional students at the high school over the next 5 10 years. How does this specific CTE addition to the high school alleviate pressure on the rest of the building while providing for that growth? >> Yeah. So, you know, as we continue to grow, it will really allow us to get creative with where classes meet. Uh our vision is to create innovative, really flexible spaces and type of a some type of an innovation center. Um, so that as we continue to grow, our academic areas have room to grow in the high school. And if we were to move our career and teched classes into a new building, it would allow for that 900 plus students to have space to grow. >> Uh, we're landlocked, as we say it, in quite a few spaces, including things like our wood shop, our metals lab, um, our fab lab, and our food service. And this would allow us to get creative with building out on those spaces. um we don't really address what the current spaces would be used for and it would really be allowing our current uh academic areas including art the opportunity to expand because they're also growing. Uh but it would allow a lot of these classes that require unique infrastructure such as electrical needs, storage needs, um dust removal needs, etc. to be in a space that has cutting edge technology but still allows our students and our teachers to innovate. >> Yeah. So it sounds like it's twofold. Like obviously the rest the entire building is is growing and and reaching capacity. So not only will taking and providing more space specifically for these CT programs and innovation, you know, classes. Not only will there be a benefit there, but there'll be a benefit to the rest of the building academically. Is that correct? Okay. We're going to need more English classrooms. We'll need more social studies classrooms, etc. And and this will allow those spaces to happen. Um while giving some flexibility to the classrooms that need that as well. >> Yeah. No, that's great. >> So, I'm going to ask you, Don. So, currently a lot of these CT programs, it sounds like they're kind of spread out, like we're in kind of a CT wing, so to speak, but there is a it is spread out. What is the educational benefit of bringing some of these classes? health sciences, robotics. I mean, we don't need to go down the entire rolodex. What is the benefit of having kind of one centralized space for all of these classes? >> One of the things that CTE all pathways, one of the things we all share is that we lean on community, not only to help us teach our students, connect with our students, but also provide authentic audiences and learning experiences for our students. And when we are spread out across a huge building like this, we often have resources that multiple classrooms and students would benefit from hearing from. And that's really a challenge. Um we also when we are in this mode, this pedigogy of teaching by learning and doing this innovation way that CTE um navigates with our students, when we can watch our colleagues doing it, it's really powerful. So, I think about Scott and I in um the compass class that we teach when we get an opportunity to go down to the Woods classroom or to and to see that teacher being really innovative with community. Oftentimes we're walking back to our classroom like what if we did that? What if we used that person? How could this benefit our students? I think maybe to add on it's when as humans we are a collaborative creature and when we have this physical space and some of our colleagues are about a quarter of a mile away it is very difficult to collaborate and if >> given the opportunity to all come together inside of the world of career and technical education we really ignite the power of our community to help us support what the vision of teaching and learning could look like. >> Yeah. We also have programming that could really work well together that because of where they are located in the building makes it really challenging. So one kind of kind of out there idea if we could help our students run a food truck. Right now we have classes that provide them with the opportunity to learn how to cook. We have we don't have the facilities to necessarily help them learn how to run a food truck, the business behind it, the staffing, following the the protocols or the you know if you were to be audited or food services were to show up. But then we have programming that could wrap that food truck because they're in graphic design and they are producing materials that that's what they would do. So, where could a space where we're close together provide opportunities not only to elevate our programming, but have some of our programming work together? >> And just to add one more piece to that, um, our compass program, uh, which is an experiential learning really professional studies course that's co-taught, um, relies a lot on that community support through the form of guest instructors and mentors. And currently from a safety and security standpoint, uh we're inviting a lot of adults from the community into the building at um you know a lot of different times and touch points. So to have a separate facility that they could access in a more safe and secure manner really allow for that collaboration to continue to happen and feel different in more of a innovation center type feel. >> Yeah. And I think like every time I come to the high school, I get lost. You know, it's such a big building. So, you think about people from the community coming in and maybe they're better at it than I am. But just having like this is a space they know they're going to every time. And that >> in, you know, would help get more people involved, I think, over time if they like, yep, I'm going to the CT, you know, wing complex, whatever we're going to call it. Right. Sure. >> Well, and I think, you know, traditional public education has a purpose and it can be awesome, but what we've learned from being CTE teachers is that there is like nothing more rewarding than having your kids have light bulb moments when they get to experience something that they can't in a traditional public school classroom. We take them off campus and they see a work environment and they're like, "Whoa, like, if I could work here." or they see a group of um teammates in a company collaborating and they all have different job titles and they're like, "Wow, so that's what it looks like to have a shared vision. I see it now." And so if we can provide those opportunities in a space that emulates what some real world environments look like, how might we give more of our kids who don't necessarily have the opportunity to get off campus or don't have the means to get off campus with those experiences that like, oh, this is what the real world looks like. Um, and it's in my high school. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, let's this is a good opportunity to take a step back. So when I was in school, like it was very like you took like a woodworking class or like a um you know a class where we we're baking something like it's it was very specific. It was like this is a random class you could do and that's it seems like it's shifting more of like it's an entire experience and there's so many options. So from your perspective, Tyler, when you think of the portrait of a wise graduate, how does how do these, you know, specialized programs and experiences fit into what you see for the portrait of a graduate? >> Sure. It's interesting because you said step back and it it feels like the portrait arrived a couple of years ago, right? and it was a really effective way to articulate what it is we hope our graduates um embody by the time that they leave here. But it's really the work that CTE teachers have been doing for you know 20 plus years um in terms of building those professional connections um helping students develop you know agility, flexibility um being creative and innovative all those pieces of that portrait of wise at a grad. We even assess on that in some of our our CTE classes. So, it's been around a while. We just have a we have a platform that's more consistently understood both by the community and all of our teachers at the high school. >> So, I think that's great. And I think, you know, again, going back to when I was in school was these were just like offshoot classes and there was still kind of this like expectation of, you know, you go through school, you get a diploma, you go on to to to college. And that's not that that's not the case now, but in, you know, one of our previous episodes we recorded talking to some students and some experiences they got in these programs, like it really was like this incredible moment of of them discovering and getting kind of a head start on like what they want to do or not do when they graduate. Do you want to talk about that a little bit, Scott? >> Sure. one one of our gifts and I'm gonna maybe I'm going to do that thing where maybe sometimes I go in the weeds. One of the stories especially as we talk with more community members and parents that we love to hear is when we're really highlighting the great things that are happening inside of career and technical education and we hear back from our community. I really wish I had that opportunity when I was in high school because it would have it would have given me such a better foundation than what I had. >> So, we love hearing that from our community members and the students that we serve. But to the point of what are the opportunities inside of experiential based learning that we offer our students and what opportunities does that open them maybe outside of a traditional I'm going to go to high school, I'm going to get my undergraduate degree and what does that look like? As we navigate our career pathways, it's an internal goal that all of our upper levels, so second level and above classes will have an industry recognized credential attached to them and or college credit. And the value of that industry recognized certification is that it allows our young people to tap into our community to really have a different experience. So, we do offer a CT internship program and students are earning while they're learning and the value ad of that for the four of us sitting around the table is you really while you're 17 or 18 years old get to test drive a career and figure out is this a fit for you andor of equal value maybe it's not a fit. >> Yeah. Can we go I want to ask you Don about Compass specifically. I think we've talked a lot about CT specific classes. How would this new space kind of serve as an engine for the Compass side of this? >> Well, I think we started Compass 10 years ago and Scott and I have gotten to be co-teers in Compass for that whole time. We've probably taught 350ish students. Yep. And just to kind of go back to what Scott said, I think in every single conference, without a doubt, we hear feedback like, "If only I would have had this experience." When I was in high school, just to reiterate what Scott said, it's it's the one thing we hear the most often. >> Um, but what Compass does really well, I think, is is and and to Scott's credit, is is they're sort of like the fuel for the community. We bring in the community. We have our students have onetoone mentors in community. We bring in guest instructors all the time. We ask our community members to act as teachers and invite our kids in. So I think having Compass at the center of a CTE innovation center gives puts us in a position to better support our colleagues and to be innovative in the way that they're using community and stretching themselves as educators to think differently because it's what we've been doing for 10 years. Um, it's the way it's the way of being that we are. And our colleagues lean on us already to help support them in some of that. And what does experiential learning look like? When I'm with ninth graders, >> Yeah. >> and Scott and has been really instrumental in helping them find some of those ways of doing. But I think having the compass program at the heart of an innovation center, a program that does this every single day and thinks about teaching and learning in that way would be really powerful for all of our CTE teachers. >> And I would just add that one thing I want our community uh community members to know is that Compass uh has a core fundamental that it's going to include a core content area as well. So, as we talk about a CTE innovation center, it isn't exclusive of just CTE. We're still partnering with all academic areas. So, for example, Scott and Don are teaching a class that is a graphic communications class that partners a CTE course with an a required English class. >> Same is true for our cyber security class. It's it's partnering a an applied math required course with a cyber security elective. Um, and as we continue to see these partnerships form, we really want to show that connectedness in an innovative way. Um, we also strive to help students see the connections between content areas that prior to our kind of rebranding as CTE. Um, we're siloed. So, for example, a student might take interior design but not think to take architecture. Those are in two separate departments, family consumer science and teched, but they have super close connections. And so now those teachers are working together and wanting to innovative innovate even more on what they can offer our students throughout that career pathway. >> Yeah, that's really interesting. I think when you know when I was in school, I think there were a lot of times we took a class and it was like what when am I ever going to use this? So I think it's really awesome that it seems like there's intentional thought behind that. Mhm. It's been really fun for me as an English teacher working with juniors and seniors and many of whom I had as a ninth or tth grader. Maybe they would not have ever defined themselves as an English student like I'm really good at this and then they come into the Compass program and they're doing 11 12th grade English and they because they're doing English by doing. They're still writing but it's they're writing emails to an authentic audience. They're going out and meeting people. They're using they're taking healthy risk by calling someone and asking for something outside of the building. And I'm like, Miss Johnson, I'm actually really good at this. Like, you are, but this is the first opportunity you've had to like really do it. >> Yeah. >> In a non-traditional way or in a way that the world is going to expect of you. It's humanities at its best. I think if given the opportunity to have Compass be the center of an innovation center as value in a and and again I'll probably mirror what what both of you said about having that model at the center of an innovation center when when we were building Compass as a program we were very intentional around having the co-eing model be part of it and we do that because our students our students would say they find it to be real world but We call it relevancy where the bone deep relevancy in every topic is baked in through the co-eing model. Then we also knew that to really change what teaching and learning looks like, we wanted to bring as many eyes, ears, and voices along on the journey. So, we're very intentional about involving our community again in all of the opportunities that Compass affords both our students and our community in we invite people in to co-e the class. Every student gets a mentor. We typically on an annual or average year inside of Compass will work with 51 different organizations. They come to us with things number 9, 10, and 11 on their list that typically don't get done. And then we have students help those organizations with those projects. >> Yeah. So let's expand on that a little bit. We I think it's it's it's obvious the benefit to students and the staff on all these programs. How does the community benefit from all of this? If we wanted to do just specifically like our mentor feedback. So this year we'll have about a hundred ba community-based mentors work with our students and our feedback. So we love to understand from our community and our students how we might be able to do things better and the probably our favorite feedback that we get from our mentors is that >> I feel like I grew as much as a person from this experience as my student did. And then sometimes our mentors feel a bit guilty because they'll be like, I think I grew more as a result of this experience. So that would be one capacity in which our community is involved. We also, and I would say this is true for all CTE teachers, we actively seek out advice through our formal advisory board. >> That's all built out of community community members on really what's happening in their reality and how do we take that those concepts and weave them into what our students are experiencing inside of a classroom. So you have a group of people in the community that work for businesses organizations that are help advise what sort of programming you're you're doing. >> Exactly. And >> we have our goal is to have the most diverse group of people serve on our advisory board >> because it helps us understand what's in our blind spot and what we don't know. The other benefit of that is having a diverse group of people serve on an advisory board really helps us ultimately serve the needs of our students the best that we possibly can. And that can be advice from um maybe it's specific content. It could be specific equipment that we need or just very high level on how we should again serve the needs of our students best. >> Yeah. Yeah. And again, I'd encourage folks to go back and listen to the episode we did with we had a couple of mentors on um I'm blanking on the names, but someone from a a large electrical company, right? Henipin, correct? >> Henipin security >> and talking about their experience. And then the other the other person on on the episode was a freelance graphic designer. So very different personalities and work, but just it was really cool. And to echo what Scott said, just they really talked about >> how they grew personally from the mentorship experience and then how it benefited the organization and and how they how their organization benefited as well just broadly of like it it it forced them and helped them think about the work they do in a more meaningful way. So yeah, it was a really cool cool thing to listen to and be a part of. >> Well, and another benefit to our community is really the talent. So we have super talented students, we have super talented staff. Uh but I think about uh our certified nurse uh aid program, certified nursing assistant or CNA. Uh we're in the second year of that and the students in that program, you know, they become state certified. They're being offered jobs before the class is even over. We're really providing our community with entry- level employees in um in a multitude of different career options um that could potentially then give back to talent acquisition across the entire area. >> Yeah. No, I we another episode we did was with a student that went through that um that that program and yeah, we we've heard for a while now, you know, since well, since co for sure of there's a shortage in n nurses and healthcare providers. And so to have, like you said, students just kind of ready to go right into the workflow, it's it's an amazing benefit to the community. Tyler, I want to ask you, are other schools, other districts doing this sort of work, kind of leaning into expanding all of these specific opportunities? >> Yeah, so we've studied a few other schools um to get ideas. One is um in Cherry Creek um in Colorado. Uh they have an innovation center, so we have spent some time with them learning about their facility and how they offer their programming in a centralized space. They're unique because they have many high schools um that come to one innovation center within the middle of a a quite large district. Um we're unique in the sense that we have the single high school. Uh but we also look to like Minnetonka to see what their opportunities are. They have a very robust Vantage program which aligns with our Compass program. Um it is in a different facility and when you go to tour it does feel different. Students are having a much different experience in a separate facility. Uh so that's just one neighbor um that would get that be a great example to look at in terms of what a separate facility could provide us. >> Yeah. >> All right. So I think we should as as we think about expanding growing this program, what is some of like the dream big, you know, classes, courses, programs look like for all of you? We'll just go around the horn here. feel like if if opening this conversation, we could probably go pretty long on this one. So maybe we'll just stick to an idea or two, but you mentioned the expansion potential or how big health care is to our to our economy locally and as a country. So Tyler, you mentioned we're in year two of a CNA program. And if we were to think about is is there an opportunity for there to be a studentrun clinic or is there an opportunity for us to expand into animal science and animal care or what does it look like if we train students to become emergency hopefully I do this right EMT or EMR certified and we actually have an ambulance in a bay so they can try it out and really see what it looks like there there the possibilities are really limitless when we think about what we could do programmingwide to serve the needs of our students and community different. Hopefully I didn't take too many of those, but they're all such great ideas. >> I'm sure. What about you, Don? >> I I think I and I love all those ideas. I think about when we we have opportunities for students to learn by doing now, but then it kind >> You mentioned food truck that got people interested and perhaps everyone else. >> We learn how to cook, but then or how to make really cool foods, but then that that stops, right? So where are the opportunities for um embedding some real world learning and experiences? I think about for me personally when I was um 17, I started working at a retail store and I hadn't really connect I wasn't super successful high school student and I hadn't really connected with a teacher that I felt um really excited to go see every day at school and I was a junior and there were two supervisors. one was a district manager and one was a store manager at that store that really became my favorite teachers. And although they were supervising me, they were the ones coaching me on maybe where you should go to college or what you want to keep doing or you're really good at this, you should try this. And so I think for me reflecting back on that experience, knowing that I'm not going to be a teacher that connects with all of my students as much as I want to, but can I then provide them with community members to be those teachers at a young age like I had the opportunity to have because otherwise if we miss some of our students, which we might if we're not mindful of other resources we can provide for them, um how how might we be able to serve them our best if we bring in more teachers? and community. So, that's where I think about where is this innovation center um can expand on some of those relationships that benefit our kids at a really early age. >> That's great. Well, I would say that we have endless um opportunities in terms of uh ideas. Uh most of our ideas though are coming from our business partners and our community advisory boards that are telling us where these in- demand high wage um highskll careers are at. Um, one area that we're looking to expand to is is early child care. You know, we have a lot of youngsters out there that that need child care and we have a super um, amazing, I guess, introductory program right now, child psychology 1 and child psychology 2 with the potential uh, to lead us into an industry certification where students can run a full day daycare. >> Wow. Um, and in looking at a facility where, you know, parents may not be super comfortable dropping off their toddler at a high school of 4,000 students, right? Can we provide them with a different scenery or a different site in the form of like a an innovation center where they feel much more confident and comfortable doing so. Uh we also think about automation, robotics, really cutting edge technology that currently our facility just can't handle in terms of the infrastructure um in a building that was built in 1997. It's it's just really that simple in terms of electrical needs, space needs. Um and I brought up talent in the past. We have super talented students that want to take their artwork um that much further. We have students that can make full-on bedroom sets in our wood shop. Or we have home construction classes where they're learning how to build walls and do electrical and insulation and install toilets and windows and and all of that just takes space in terms of where do we store all these projects so that students can then continue to do that work without overlapping other students. And currently we have to be very strategic about how we schedule those classes. really only one at a time because we don't have the space to support hundreds and hundreds of student projects. So this innovation this innovation center or the philosophy here would be that it would provide those flexible spaces to allow for that innovation to occur but also have the space to allow for those storage to occur as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. That that flexible space I I've seen that a lot. And like what would this space like physically look like compared to like when we think of a normal high school classroom, right? What does that look like? >> Uh so it's kind of TBD. Uh we have some examples. Like I said, we've studied some other schools. Um it may be really large spaces that have the flexibility to adjust based on student enrollment and you know career needs. So maybe we have a a medical facility in the building that can adapt to provide nursing, it can provide veterinary tech, it can provide dentistry, really whatever the needs are in terms of a medical setting. Or maybe it's a a wood shop that looks like, you know, a the Menard's yard where we have a lot of space to store lumber and other products like metals um in a space that's large enough to build a shed or a house uh based on the needs again of the community that we can then move items in and out of. >> Right. So yeah. So obviously like a lumberyard versus dental clinics, the spaces and requirements are going to be different, but just what I'm hearing is like the fact that it would be flexible would allow for the expanded programming. >> Well, and one piece to add that I didn't mention before is just the food service aspect. So we the number one most requested class in the high school right now and and has been for many many years is our intro to culinary arts class. We have hundreds and hundreds of students in excess of 900 students a year that want to take that introductory class and that just then feeds these other classes within that same pathway that students are interested in. We have students that currently work in our Wise at a cafe um to help us serving and prepping and and getting ready for the next day. But what would it look like if we took that additional 900 students that we need to serve lunch to throughout the day or breakfast and provide more of a studentrun type of experience in an innovation center? So it would have to be separate uh because again we're landlocked, but could it be studentrun with the talent that they're learning from our teachers currently in that pathway? >> Yeah, like a food truck, right? Mhm. >> Well, and there's other aspects to it too that that a lot of >> people may not think of of, you know, behind the scenes there's ordering, there's inventory management, there's supply chain management, you know, accounting and all these other connections to our other pathways that could really provide that comprehensive experience in terms of that hands-on experiential learning. >> Yeah, that's great. Well, as someone with toddlers going back to the child care thing, I think I would welcome more options for child care in the community. Um, but yeah, that's that's all really exciting. Um, okay. So, I'm going to go around again. Why is it critical to invest in, you know, CT? Now, >> we're probably at the collision of so many things. One of which is if our building is at capacity, >> yeah, >> we're going to need to really put systems in place to serve the needs of our students best. >> Also, four of us have mentioned at length what learning looked like for us and how it doesn't look like that anymore. So to think about what we could do to empower our next generation of learners and then how they potentially fit in as the next generation of employees inside of our community. We can't build classrooms like we did 10 years ago. We really have to be innovative and we have to come up with a space that again to Tyler to your point flexes based off of employment needs, flexes based off of economic data. So we really have to be very thoughtful about how how again and I keep on coming back to that but how do we serve the needs of our students and community at the same time and if given this opportunity one to ease up a little bit of the overcrowding inside of the building and then two empower our students to see themselves in tomorrow's economy. That feels like a really exciting project to be a part of. >> Yeah. What about you, Don? Why why do we need to invest in this? >> Yeah, I would mirror what Scott said. I think I mean potentially this could be the last addition we ever get to put on this high school. And I think the opportunity is there to think about the way that we know our Gen Alpha students prefer learning. They're collaborative. They're techsavvy. Um they want to find relevance and they want to in that inquiry based learning. So, how do we create, if we get the opportunity, not only learning spaces that that mirror those gifts and talents that that generation is coming with, but also recognize that innovation and future thinking and how do we create a space that can be more we can we can tweak based on industry changes versus building another 20 traditional looking classrooms. I guess I would just add to that that you know it really allows us to be at that cutting edge level of innovation in terms of our uh our reputation you know as wise out of public schools. It it lets us soar beyond what many post-secondary institutions can even provide in terms of a flexible space that allows students to innovate. It allows us to meet our community's demands in terms of those high demand high wage careers. Um, and it really would allow us to, to Don and Scott's point, reinvision what schooling looks like the next 10, 20 years ahead of us. Um, and and not stick with that traditional square classroom that is so typical >> um, as we want to continue to align with uh, industry experiences. We know that's true of businesses today as well. All right, as we close here, I'm going to have one final question for all of you. Why do you love CT? Why is it so fulfilling for you >> as CTE guy? That's that's a super super easy question to answer and maybe I'll do a couple dovetales. Don and I would be okay saying that when we think about our high school experience, we were probably not super successful as students. And it wasn't until I really figured out through mentorship what it was that lit my fire. And I think about he was one of my first mentors. His first name was Russ. Think about what Russ saw in me and then what how that allowed me to really figure out like I love connecting young people to their why. like if I can find tools or resources or community connections to f to help a young person at 15 or 16 really figure out like ah that is where I want to be when I'm in my early 20s like that lights my fire and CTE has been the vehicle that's allowed me to serve the needs of young learners in that capacity. >> Why do you love CTE? I love it because as a English teacher, I think regardless of where the world goes with technology and AI and all the innovative things, at the end of the day, everybody needs to know how to do English language arts. We have to collaborate. We have to work. We have to communicate. It's that like I mentioned earlier, the importance of humanity, like character, motivation, and understanding how to work as a team. Those are things that are never going to go away. But as an English teacher, I've watched my English students get to that humanities aha moment so much faster than than I've had experienced in more of a traditional setting. It's not to say that it can't be done, but when students are hands-on collaborating for real world companies and authentic audiences and they and they care. Like my favorite thing is when we're going to our mentor kickoff in Compass and the students are like like glued to my arm like I'm their mother or something because they're so nervous. Like Miss Johnson, I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. And this is for no points at all. It's just for you're going to meet your mentor. It's like but you care. You're we were able to create opportunities where there's that human connection for students and they can't help but care because it's real. So that's what I love about CTE. The word that comes to mind right away is relevance. Um, as a former business teacher, it was always exciting to see just the relevance that we create in our classrooms, uh, based on our content to much of what Don and Scott have already said. It aligns perfectly with the portrait of Wise at a graduate. You know, communication is a is a core trait that is going to allow someone to be successful in the future. If we can instill that communicating effectively within their high school experience, how amazing is that as a skill to take with them? And there's many more examples to this, but the content is relevant and it's hard to argue that what we're teaching in CTE is not applicable to a student's future. Well, I want to go back to high school. That's my takeaway from all this. Just the opportunities that students have now and what they could continue to have as the high school potentially expands sounds amazing. We actually had our curriculum fair this last week where thousands of families were here to learn about what we offer particularly for our incoming 9th graders and all night long that's what we hear of wow we wish they had we had these opportunities in high school and I'm I'm sure we all feel that you know in this podcast right now as well. Well, these are amazing opportunities. Our students don't really know what they didn't have cuz they're living it, right? Um but our community members for sure. Um you know, giving them an opportunity to become more involved in what we offer and as we innovate, the more the better. >> Well, and when Scott and I last Wednesday, we did a couple breakout sessions about CTE. And one of the kind of biggest questions that we had from our audience was all the credentials, college credits, AP offerings that come along with our CTE programming. And so that something to be proud of as well. >> Well, this has been great. Um, for those listening that want to learn more about CTE specifically, you can go to the wisettaschools.org, go to the high school website under the academics tab. You can find uh more information on CT and specifically about the potential addition to the high school if you go to vote.wisettachools.org. Um there's a fact sheet there about the high school um addition specifically and there'll be more information about that. And then finally, election day, April 14th. Early voting starts February 27th. So with that, Scott, Don, Tyler, thank you for joining me and have a great rest of your week. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.