School district polishes technical education program with work-based learning
The U.S. is short on welders.
About 400,000 short to be exact by 2024.
And the average age of a welder in the U.S. today is 40.
More welders are retiring than joining the industry. It’s a common dilemma facing numerous skills-based career fields today.
While the situation is not ideal for employers, who must compete to recruit a more and more limited number of skilled laborers, it is good for employees, who can command higher salaries with little concern about job security.
It all makes for a grand time to be a welding instructor or a welding pupil.
Kirk Willoughby knows this firsthand.
He teaches welding and machining courses at the Delta Technical Center. And his students are in high demand, with companies reaching out to Willoughby seeking fresh faces on a near constant basis, no college degree required.
It all represents a significant shift in education, from college-bound preparatory courses to instruction focused more on building and testing skills mastery at the high school level.
Where once there might have been a simple shop class or woodworking course for mechanically-inclined students, particularly in rural locales, there are now fully-equipped laboratory-type classroom settings, where students go from task to task setting a foundation, building basic skill sets, and finally proving they’ve mastered the material, moving on to more advanced courses as they go, or maybe right into a job.
Welding is just one of 16 such career pathways open to Millard County high school students. The 16 mostly reflect the needs of local industry— agriculture education is popular, so are health sciences and engineering and technical sciences—as well as the interests expressed by students.
Nationally, there are 79 career pathways identified by CTE educators.
February was CTE month— CTE standing for career and technical education—and in Delta that culminated in a luncheon last week for business owners and managers as well as educators. The assembled group heard about district efforts to take CTE courses to a new level, including internships, mentoring, apprenticeships and more.
Brett Callister, MSD’s Career & Technical Education director, showcased efforts to tap into data to more nimbly assess industry needs and create curriculum that attracts both students and industry partners.
Snow College, he said, has also become a major partner to Central Utah CTE programs, providing college credit and scholarships to students who complete coursework locally. The college also provides students a seamless pathway to continue training after high school. Callister said he thinks the relationship with Snow College will grow in the future, perhaps with students even traveling from Delta to Richfield once a week to forge closer ties and add another enhanced feature to Delta Tech’s CTE offerings.
Callister said the district is committed to tracking students’ career aspirations earlier than previously done— from seventh grade onward— to determine where district resources can best be used to better foster career development.
“We really want to grow our own kids, right, and want them to try to stay here as much as possible,” he said. “Some of these kids aren’t all going to college right after high school. There are some great careers here in Millard County, where that’s not required.”
And that’s where local businesses come in—a smattering were represented at the luncheon, ag, healthcare, mining, even local media.
Callister said the district has built a way for industry to reach out, tell the district about the opportunities it offers young employees, what types of skills it needs young employees to have and what opportunities—think internships or apprenticeships or mentoring—it can offer to students following a pathway toward a career.
“This is an opportunity for them to see this is what is available to me in Millard County after I graduate. And not just waiting until they are a seniors to find this out. We’re going to work with them as seventh graders, eighth graders and hit them really hard as ninth graders,” he said.
Erin Sorenson is the district’s work-based learning coordinator. She’s been in search of opportunities for students outside of the classroom, opportunities that narrow the gap between what’s learned in school and how it’s applied in real-world settings. Her pitch at last Wednesday’s luncheon was that virtually every business can benefit from providing such opportunities to local students.
“These students are capable of really incredible things,” she said. “And it’s amazing what happens to a student when you place an expectation, give them the tools to get there and then they succeed.”
She said matching student skills with employer needs helps ensure both benefit from students who complete internships or similar opportunities, such as summer jobs.
It’s also not just hardcore skills students are encouraged to master. Soft skills such as communicating clearly, being on-time for work, working as a team member, are just as important, Sorenson said. Soft skills typically grow with real-world experience.
“This is what we are trying to build and grow,” Sorenson said, encouraging local businesses to reach out and get involved.
Superintendent David Styler was at the luncheon and noted how many business owners and managers in the room were themselves graduates of local schools. He said they should know better than anyone what the district is trying to achieve—producing successful students and keeping them as close to home as possible.
“That’s what we want. We love all of you that came from elsewhere, but we want the opportunity for every kid that graduates from our schools to be able to stay here and be here,” he said.
Willoughby, for his part, knows the feeling. He keeps in contact with many of his welding students, watching them pursue careers, find success, find their niche and just maybe come back home someday.
One former student, he recently said, is a good example of this. The former student is relocating an Osh Cut metal fabricating facility from Orem to just outside Delta in the near future.
It’s the perfect example, the teacher said, of a career success finding a pathway home.
