Are you looking to learn skills that directly translate to your desired future? Northwest Career and Technical Academy is a great way to get that learning before you get out of high school. NCTA will help you find your path if you’re not sure what you want to do and help you find direction in your future career.
“I didn’t even know about wild land before NCTA,” says Ryan Clark, an NCTA student in the F.I.T.E class (F.I.T.E is the program that runs NCTA’s Fire Science/EMS class). “I wanted to be a firefighter, but I didn’t know anything about it. Then I came here, and I learned all this crazy crazy stuff, and I was like, ‘Woah, this is sick.’”
Clark recently scored a job for the summer working as a wildland firefighter for WA state DNR. He says his class was very helpful in him getting the job. “Just for getting prepared for like, my interviews, what a good resume looks like, even volunteer hours, and just preparing me to speak in front of people.”
NCTA provides that option for students ready for the work force.
“We’re a place where students come when they decide to do career learning in a particular pathway,” says Jerry Grisham, the Work Site Coordinator at NCTA’s Mount Vernon Campus. “The benefit to NCTA is it’s not against your high school, it’s building more of your high school”.
At NCTA you will never wonder why you are there, says Grisham. “You’ll hear the question of, why am I learning this? You don’t hear that at NCTA, because it’s self-evident.”
Grisham, when asked why he works for NCTA, said “[students] start to figure out how school works for them, instead of the other way around.” Not only will NCTA help you become who you want to be, it is also just a good time. “This class has been a lot of fun over the past, last year, and it’s been super, super fun this year,” said Clark when asked why he came back for a second year. “You get to have a bunch of fun experiences that no other classes get to do, and I just figured, shoot, might as well do it again.”
The biggest difference between NCTA and regular public school is the students are there because they chose to be. When you are working towards something you chose to do you can be motivated to learn.
“One of the unique things about NCTA that I see constantly is students, when they have a purpose, they come to school with a purpose,” said Grisham. “No longer a school doing something to them. They’re using school to do something for them, which is a huge piece.”