10 Oct Green Mountain High School: Resurrecting CTE in a High School
Background:
Green Mountain High School is a 9 – 12 comprehensive high school with a student population of 1500. It is one of 37 high schools in the Jefferson County School District (largest district in the state) in the Denver Metro Area.Back in the 1990’s Green Mountain High School, along with many other schools across the country, removed all forms of CTE from the school and the facilities that were once there including Industrial Arts lab spaces, Home Economics kitchens, and Agricultural Education facilities. All of these spaces were transformed into classrooms in an era when those “hands on” skills were no longer supposed to be necessary life skills for students’ future success. This is where Alex and Scott come in to the scene. They are working on teaching the program content while simultaneously building adequate lab space. They are making decisions about what is really needed in a shop and lab space? Over the past eight years, GMHS has been adding robust and dynamic CTE programing back into the school through the academies program. AMPED and Geometry in Construction fit perfectly into this model.
AMPED Going Forward:
AMPED is currently running out of two classrooms, and one of those rooms is experiencing a major transformation to become a mobile, multi-purpose fabrication lab. In this lab, we have successfully produced shirts which is the main avenue for funding in the AMPED program. This shows that any space can be adequate for the production of shirts using plastisol heat transfers. And, speaking of plastisol heat transfers, as part of the GMHS academies program, five years ago they started a program called GM Gear and Printing which is a full screen-printing business. Alex and James Cale, the lead of GM Gear and Printing attended a training and learned how to produce Plastisol Heat Transfers. Since many of the AMPED replication sites have followed by using t-shirt production as a way to fund their respective programs, the main advantage now is that you can purchase Plastisol Heat Transfers through us rather than more expensive vendors. Please contact Alex directly to set up your first order at Email
Geometry in Construction Going Forward:
Beginning in the spring of 2018, Scott and the rest of the GIC team at GMHS started planning for the 2018-2019 school year by establishing a partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver. Denver and the entire front range of Colorado (Colorado Springs through Northern Colorado) has seen an incredible amount of growth over the past decade. As a result, house prices are at an all-time high. Additionally, since the great recession of 2008 housing production has never been able to recover due, in part, to a severe labor shortage of skilled workers. During these initial meetings we all came to an agreement that Green Mountain High School will partner with Habitat of Metro Denver to build a 24′ x 24′, one-bedroom, modular Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). An ADU is a small house that is designed to be placed in an urban back yard to be utilized as a rental unit for the family that owns the primary house on the lot. Habitat has gotten involved in this to help in the revitalization of neighborhoods.
On Tuesday, September 18, 2018, the Geometry in Construction program won a $15,000.00 grant award through Colorado Succeeds in the category of Education Innovation. The grant will help with the launch of the GIC program. This was a competitive grant process that involved an initial application including a video, live pitch in front of a panel of judges then culminated in the academy awards show for educators where the winner was announced. Please take a look at the following link to see the award presentation: https://coloradosucceeds.org/succeeds-prize/watch/ If you do not wish to watch the entire hour and 45 minute video of the entire awards show then please fast forward to 1:20:18 which is the start of the Education Innovation part of the broadcast.
Green Mountain High School will be open for visitations to see both AMPED and GIC in action along with the GMHS academy program beginning November 1, 2018 for those of you who are looking to bring these programs to your schools. Contact Scott at 970-219-5020.