By: Ashley Chen and Neval Mulaomerovic
SVCTE offers hands-on training and experience in courses that are not available at MHS, Counselor Beth Harke said. The programs provide students with vocational training that is sought after by colleges and employers, she said.
“You get hands-on experience in things such as VetTech, our veterinary program. You can’t take a VetTech program here, but there, their staff members bring their animals in,” Harke said. “You get a chunk of time there so you’re either taking two or three classes there a day so that you’re really able to dive deep into the material and understand it.”
Courses are unique because they cover career topics that are not taught at MHS, Junior Sophia Ling said. In the Mobile Apps and Coding course, students receive one-on-one assistance from instructors as well as the opportunity to work on individual assignments, she said.
“In the class, we’re doing SWIFT right now,” Ling said. “We started off by doing some HTML, JavaScript, and Adobe Illustrator. We have a bunch of mini projects that we do. We make a tic-tac-toe game or we make different calculators. Our assignments are graded based on how many mistakes we make in our code.”
SVCTE partners with another program to assist students in college preparation, Ling said. Students receive guidance in building both a resume and cover letter, for employment purposes and college applications. “Coding is going to be something else you add on your resume in the future. Learning these programming languages and how to build a resume helps a lot going forward,” Ling said.
Meanwhile, Senior Jonathan Van is taking Automotive Services. He decided to enroll out of personal interest, and he has already worked on cars before this program, Van said.
“It’s like a real shop [at SVCTE],” Van said. “There’s program tools and equipment we can use. Some of the equipment can go up to twenty thousand dollars, so it’s really expensive. It’s like top of the line. I would say if you are serious about trying to learn, it’s best to go in with prior experience.”
In the more hands-on class, which teaches engine repair along with brakes and suspension, students go into the classroom and get their job orders, Van said. Many training cars are provided for students to work on, he added.
Besides learning skills needed for the automotive industry, students are eligible for internships at dealerships, Van said. From there, you can get hired if they like you enough, he continued.
“[My favorite part about the class is] definitely the hands-on experience you get,” Van said. “It’s really good. If you are serious about it you will definitely learn a lot. The instructors will be able to select who actually cares about the class so they’ll be able to focus on you and try to get you to your best potential.
Junior Shreyas Rangan is taking Mechatronics, which combines mechanics and electrical engineering. He gets to code and build robots that do certain tasks, Rangan said.
“I chose this class because I was interested in robotics, so I wanted to do something that was more real-world,” Rangan said. “Currently, I’m doing a hydrogen fuel cell part car and we’re trying to use that to compete in a race.”
SVCTE is unique in that you get hands-on experience that involves a career-oriented approach to education instead of a book type of learning, Rangan said. You do something pertaining to a certain field, and then really try to master that field instead of learning the foundation around it, he continued.
“[My favorite part about Mechatronics is] the field trips,” Rangan said. “We went to a tech company and we got to see a robot that mapped out an entire floor, and it didn’t need any human assistance to move around. There was an entire obstacle course and it went through it without any human assistance.”
However, there are some downsides to going to SVCTE to take classes. Senior Anthony took Cybersecurity last semester at SVCTE because he was interested in pursuing a computer science major in the future, Ngo said.
“I would say the worst part would be buses, sometimes, because the buses aren’t always clean,” Ngo said. “Sometimes the buses would come late and so, because we have to be there in the morning, it gets really cold. Sometimes the traffic would be really bad and we get to campus late or on the way back to school, instead of getting back at 10:00, which was the advertised time to get back to school, we get back at like 10:20, 10:30, so we’ll be late to third period, and that was the thing I didn’t really like.”
There are benefits to SVCTE, despite the bus situation, Ngo said. Classes at SVCTE are two hours long, which is one hour and 10 minutes more than class periods spent at MHS, he continued. “Because you’re forced to spend extra time in a class, you’re able to get more work done, and therefore you’re able to learn more,” Ngo said.
“SVCTE is unique because it offers many opportunities and resources that would otherwise be very difficult for a regular high school student to find on his or her own,” Senior Winnie Xian said over email. “It is also unique because it can help you gain life and technical skills needed for a successful job! You can also gain college credit while taking classes at SVCTE.”
Xian is currently enrolled in Medical Science/Health Careers. In the class, she learns how to take a patient’s vitals and performs dissections, Xian said.
“I chose Medical Science/Health Careers because I want to work in the medical field when I am older,” Xian said. “I wanted to see if I liked this career field before I fully commit to it.”