One thing Sedro-Woolley High School excels in is the wide variety of classes to fit any student’s needs. The Engineering and Design class is no exception. This is a class all about problem-solving and giving students an opportunity for hands-on learning. Engineering and Design provides students with the inside look of a job like this. 

  The class gives the students a way of learning and thinking how an engineer might be without having to obtain it all over a computer screen. 

  “Engineering and Design is starting to talk and think about engineering processes,” said Bobbi Ahrenius, the Engineering and Design teacher. “It’s a lot of hands-on, giving them a problem and them trying to fix it in some way.” 

  While just having the class itself is an amazing way of giving the students a connection to what this might look like out in the world, Mrs. Ahrenius came into the teaching job already with previous knowledge, just wanting to help students find out if this is what they want to do. 

  “Before teaching I was a structural engineer, so I started out in engineering and I actually wanted to start teaching to help younger students, high schoolers, figure out if engineering was for them.” Says Ahrenius, then continuing to state that seeing these students process the work and think their way through is why she likes teaching the class in the end. “I think getting to know kids and just seeing them think through processes and how to do it and failing, and then coming back and actually doing something. Because lots of parts of engineering is failure, you might fail and then all of a sudden things actually work.” 

  With Engineering and Design being one of the big CTE classes that Sedro-Woolley High School provides, it’s a fantastic way for students to not only have access to knowledge of how Engineering and Design connect to the ways and jobs of the real world but also getting to partake in it with working on assignments using the methods taught in the real world and applying them in incredible ways.