Hi, I'm EJ and welcome back to In Our Opinion in today's episode, we went to Southeast Career and Technical Academy to venture through the school and see how they demonstrate work based learning.

Let's take a look.

What we focus on and we hyperfocus on is the idea of taking our kids and making sure that they have a versatile amount of options after they leave here.

The idea is not just to prepare them for higher education or employability, it's for both.

Everyone who goes to college still has to have a job, and having a pathway in college isn't for everyone.

So if we can take all that very large responsibility and do something with it here before they leave us, then we've done our job.

We sat down with students from the culinary, cosmetology and graphic design programs at the school and asked them how work based learning has impacted their lives and their plans, both inside and outside of school.

Being in cosmo has made my passion for cosmo grow.

Like before, I used to like watching it, and now that I'm doing it, I love it and I know that's what I want to do.

Before coming to the school, I was pretty fascinated by graphic design and coming to this school and sort of being able to show me like what my life would be like if I were to pursue this career.

It kind of gave me a glimpse.

Yeah.

Kind of solidified, like whether I wanted to actually put some time into this or not in college.

I really do enjoy cooking.

And so going to this culinary program has helped my passion and helped me actually learn what to do and how to do it correctly.

How has this school affected your passion to work for what you want to do in the future?

Usually people think that when you come to this school, it's what you want to be when you grow up.

And at first I did think that I was like, I'm going to be a chef, I'm be cooking it up, but I don't want to be a chef when I'm older.

I want to go into the hospitality program for college, which is very close to culinary.

It pairs really well with it because it's management and, you know, preparing yourself and helping other people.

You do definitely have to deal with people.

Yeah.

How is coming to the school affected your passion to work for what you want to do in the future?

Coming here is really show me.

It takes a lot of maturity and a lot of responsibility.

I have to clock in four times a day when I come in, when I go to lunch and I come back.

And even if there's days I don't want to like wake up and go to school, it's not school anymore.

It's a career.

It's cosmetology.

Like you have to go in its work.

Do you think that this education is necessary for your career path?

For my future.

I'm not going to primarily focus on graphic design while I'm going to go focus on psychology or neuroscience.

So I wouldn't say it's necessary, but it is very nice to have because while maybe you don't want to end up doing what you want to do in your future, you still kind of have that skill.

Yeah.

And I think that's really nice to have in your education, not just like your core classes.

How have you applied this learning outside of school?

I have actually done a lot of culinary based things outside of school like this last October, I had the chance to cater my cousin's wedding.

Wow.

Yes.

So I catered for about 80 people.

And how old are you?

I'm 16.

That's crazy.

You said 80 people.

I love, I mean, everything that I do outside of school, I cook for my family every night.

I love doing it.

I love the entire premise of cooking.

I don't know.

It's like school, work, cook.

Do you think coming to this school gives you an advantage?

I feel like it does, because some of the classes that I'm taking now have taught me a lot.

Right now we are studying like workplace skills, so that will definitely help me after high school to get a job and be organized.

It puts you into the role already.

It's definitely given me an advantage.

Yeah.

Get the skills that I want.

I already have like a place that I can fall back on to where it can possibly get a job.

The attributes that you get here, it kind of help to kind of like find other jobs that are not focused here, but you gain again, that skill that you can do like interviews, You know what to say.

You have skills so you can fall back on that other jobs can look at.

Coming to this school has made me more prepared than I think than a lot of people who want to who just go to a regular high school.

It's not our life, but it is what we are focused on.

I am in the culinary for 75% of my day.

Because I came to the sector looking for a culinary experience.

Everything I've learned was very necessary for my career path.

I absolutely think that it's given me an advantage because I feel like these aren't skills you can like.

They're not like hard skills, they're soft skills.

You just have to, like, go through it to be able to learn it.

You can't really, like, learn these things in a classroom or have like an elective.

This is like you're just living life, You have a job.

Thank you to all the students, teachers and staff that helped us out on this episode.

Once again, I'm EJ with the Vegas PBS Media Crew and we'll see you next time.