Thomas Jefferson High School's P-TECH program is a rigorous and demanding pathway that provides students with college credits, career certifications, and hands-on experiences in various fields.
Students at Thomas Jefferson High School will tell you that David Newhouse's class is fun, but it's not easy. One morning, we watched as students learned about the economics of business. 'This is called Wallerstein's World System theory, we're going to do some interesting stuff with it,' Newhouse told students.
The students researched how a pair of wireless headphones is made, what parts come from which country, where it's cheapest to assemble, and how much markup goes into the stuff we buy to make money. 'They have kids picking up the things we use for our phone batteries, and they have to go to the secondary one where they start manufacturing the raw material,' said Frida Ramirez, another student. Day one ninth graders are taught to embrace deep independent study found in college. Many of the teachers are also professors at Dallas College who teach the same lessons to younger students, and just like choosing a major, these kids are choosing a pathway to a career. 'It's very complex, but it's personally for me, it's easier to understand than it is to explain,' said Neha Medina, a student in the class.High school students learn how doctors fight blocked arteries with hands-on lessons This complex class is just one leg of P-TECH, (which stands for Pathways in Technology Early College High School), a Dallas ISD program designed to help these students not only earn college credit, even a degree while in high school, but also choose a focus like computer programming, take college classes in that field, complete an internship and get certifications to work all while in high school. 'Which is really helpful for people in our neighborhood, especially because we don't have those economic opportunities. So I looked into it, and I would be the first student to go to college in my family,' said Dannaly Arevalo, a student. 'I'm on the business pathway. I just think it's like the backbone of everything. So whatever career I would go into, I could use business to do entrepreneurship or just to manage my money better. Arevalo wants to be the first in her family to finish college and she wants to be a nurse, but P-TECH is teaching her business, so she can not just work at a hospital but maybe own a company providing nursing services. 'Seeing how my parents have, like, struggled to make it in this economy, so I just wanted to make sure I had options to be able to get ahead and support everyone who I love,' she said. She will get a mentor whose done the same kind of thing, and work an internship to see firsthand how it's done. Arevalo will walk away with a certification of some sort in business, so she'll have that done while in nursing school.If it sounds like a lot, it is. 'For a little while, I thought I was not capable enough, I thought this is going to be hard. Especially hearing the people from last year say, 'Oh yeah, AP Geography is hard,' but now I feel like it's more of a challenge I can put myself through to think, 'Oh I can do it.'' P-TECH has been around a while, but students have been a bit hesitant to sign up, remember, Mr. Newhouse is tough. 'Really it's raising the rigor, we're saying, 'OK, 8th grade rigor isn't going to cut it anymore, we need you writing here, ten times more, ten times better,'' said Newhouse. Increasingly students in Dallas ISD are trying it, and succeeding, and while the district hasn't made some huge effort to draw more students in, they're coming. Geovanny left a charter school, and turned down a full scholarship to one of the most prestigious private high schools in town, for P-TECH. 'It was like a school fair about high school now with my mom and my dad, and we were just talking about, you know, just browsing schools so I could see what I could do for the future,' he said. This may seem like a great program for the really smart kids, but Dallas ISD has said, that's not the goal. 'It's not just hey, let's take the best of the best, the best and the brightest, and let's go give them this better opportunity. it is. Let's take a cross-section of the students who would normally go to our school, or could normally go to our school, and give them this opportunity,' said Thomas Jefferson High School principal Ben Jones. But it's not all blue skies and butterflies, kids do get halfway through the program and say, it's not for me. 'There is a time they reach their junior year, you start to see a little bit of burnout, said Sheree Williams-Brown. She is one of the administrators in charge of P-TECH students and says while tough, this marriage of job training, college and high school is the future, and the district is learning from those students who have struggled in P-TECH. 'This year we have progress monitoring, that's how we watch and make sure that our kids are passing these classes. These are people who are assigned to each kid -- like we have a roster of kids that we monitor from day one,' said Williams Brown.
P-TECH Pathways In Technology Early College High School College Readiness Career Training Dallas ISD Thomas Jefferson High School STEM Education
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