From your iced coffee at the Tappan Green restaurant to the very newspaper you are reading, the Career and Technical Education (CTE) department influences many different facets of the lives of students at the high school.
The high school has a robust CTE program that provides students with real-world experience in fields from culinary arts to personal finance, while adapting its curriculum to meet career demands beyond college.
CTE Curriculum Coordinator Britt Stevens said the program is valuable because it provides students with new skills and ways of thinking. While not a core subject like science or history, Stevens said the department provides students an opportunity to learn practical expertise.
“My belief as an educator is that you should learn things through more than just theory. You should learn things that allow you to try, practically, the skills you are learning about,” Stevens said. “We encourage students to work and think in ways that may be different from some core traditional classes. That might mean we are forcing students to think more creatively or collaboratively.”
Sophomore Jasper MacDonald is currently taking Culinary Exploratory, which teaches students the basics of cooking and working in a kitchen environment. She said she enjoys the class and appreciates leaving with a tangible result.
“I like getting to eat the stuff that I make, mostly because it’s right before lunch or at the end of the day,” MacDonald said.
Stevens said that the department always has flexibility to adapt their curriculum to a changing world, as they did in Psychology of Marketing.
“It’s a totally different course than it was when I first came up with teaching marketing because [of] how companies are marketing has changed radically with data and social media,” Stevens said.
Sophomore Teren Lai took Psychology of Marketing and enjoyed learning about famous advertising campaigns in a unique and exciting way.
“What I really loved about Psychology of Marketing was that it was formulated like a normal academic class, but you get to learn about something that you’re very interested in,” Lai said. “It’s definitely one of the best classes, if not the best, that I know of for entrepreneurial adventures.”
Ed Wiser teaches Medical Careers, Woodworking and Robotics in the CTE department. Next year, he will be teaching a new in-depth construction course called “Construction: A Tour of the Trades.” Wiser said that many students have been neglected by the college-focused culture at the high school, and that practical classes offered by the CTE department can help serve their educational needs more effectively.
“Their question is, what can I do if I were to graduate from Brookline High and get a job in any of those [construction] trades, or even a medical career that you don’t need to go to college for?” Wiser said. “The reason why the CTE department exists and why it’s going to flourish is for the kids who are looking for something they can learn in school and have a great career in.”
MacDonald says that she appreciates the life skills CTE classes teach that help students succeed beyond high school.
“I like knowing that I have the skills to do this at home, and knowing that I can survive on my own,” MacDonald said. “I think all of them [the CTE courses] are very useful life skills that everyone should have before they go out into the world and have to do adult things.”
