What’s Right With Our Schools: Students Visit Sequoyah
SODDY DAISY, TN (WDEF) – Great things are happening at Sequoyah High School. Students are learning the skills that employers want. Now, kids from across Hamilton County are taking a closer look. It’s a practical example of what’s right with our schools.
Amanda Baron is the Co-Principal for Early Tech at Sequoyah High School.
She explains, “We are hosting what we’re calling, Eighth Grade Experience Days. So, all of our feeder eighth graders are going to come in and they get to tour and be a part of three different shops, where they’re actually working with the instructor and the students in that shop.”
She continues, “Now, we’re in the machining shop. So, students were engraving keychains and working with the metal lathes. So, they get a full experience of what they could potentially be a part of next year as a ninth grader. Our partnership school, so any student that goes to Soddy Daisy High School, Red Bank high school or Hixon High School can come to these programs half day. We’re just an extension of that school building. ”
Jazzie Shriner is an 8th grader at Red Bank Middle School.
She exclaims, “I learned how to go through this. I forgot what it’s called. But you know that’s what I learned. And I learned how to saw.”
Kirk Johnson is the CTE Machining Technologies Instructor at Sequoyah High School. He has a chin made of granite and arms like thick steel cables.
He explains, ” It shows them an opportunity that they have here at Sequoyah, and spark some interest, and we’ll see what happens right?”
Amanda Baron adds, “It’s important to have eighth graders understand all their options in high school. Because it literally starts the very next year, and a lot of our students that probably came through today, if you’ to ask them before they came here what is machining, what is welding, they have a baseline understanding. But now they have a physical experience to pair with that title or with that job. Um, to make an educated choice on what they want their future to look like.”
She concludes, ” So, all of the pathways that are here are high demand high wage. These are Future Ready institutes and so they’re high wage high demand sort of pathways to lifelong careers. Um, we also do it in sort of a cohort model so students that would be in a machining shop would also be in for example, an English class or a science class together. So they can connect their interest to that career. I want them to go home and have all these experiences to talk to their families and friends, to be able to make a choice that’s going to benefit their future. Even though they’re only like 13 or 14 years old, they can already start planning for that uh successful future.”
