South Warren High School's career pathways program helps students explore professional options

High school is a time to begin exploring possible career options and at South Warren High School students are helping their peers learn more about possible career pathways.

Tuesday, students held the career pathway circuit event, which brings eighth-graders to the high school to learn from juniors and seniors about different career pathways South Warren High School has to offer.

The high school has pathways ranging from animal science, marketing, and fashion and interior design.

"And so they take courses in that pathway, so, for example, education, we have a fundamentals of teaching pathway so they might be wanting to be a teacher, well obviously they would need to go to college so we prep them here so they can get interested, explore the pathway, and pursue it once they get on to college," said Melissa Cunningham, Career and Technical Education Coordinator.

Organizers say this event is designed to help all students, no matter what path they decide to take after high school graduation.

"We have a lot of students at South Warren High School that go on to college, but not all of them do," said Cunningham. "We try to call it the "next steps" after high school, so it's not college for everyone, sometimes it's going immediately into a career and we like to prepare them if they want to go straight into a career."

Organizers told 13 News the pathways circuit event often opens student's eyes to learn more about a career they had not thought about.

The career pathways event is repeated after the student's freshman year to help anyone who may have changed their minds.

"You know, every year we do this I am always so impressed with my high school students and watching them talk about their pathways, this is truly the most rewarding thing I do as a career and technical education coordinator here at South Warren High School," said Cunningham. "Just getting to watch them it's just awesome, we are really proud of these kids."

Organizers say a good thing about providing these options in high school is students can take a course in a pathway and if they don't like it they have not lost any money on a college class. Also, several classes offered at the high school will count toward college credit.