Quietly, and with no fanfare at all, the Greenfield-Central and Mt. Vernon school boards approved an aviation program during their June meetings in partnership with the two school districts and Ivy Tech Community College. In fact, on Monday, 10 Hancock County juniors and seniors will begin learning what it takes to become a pilot or to work administratively at an airport.
What excites me the most about this opportunity is that this curriculum is everything career education should be. It is an example of our community coming together to put a program in place for students that is relevant, in high-demand, and cutting edge. It is exactly what the new graduation pathways should look like in action. In its final form, it will be school districts working together with local industries and post-secondary institutions to prepare and train students for a career in the aviation industry while earning college credits and a high school diploma — all happening in Hancock County.
Officially, the new graduation pathways program doesn’t take effect until the 2022-23 school year which is with our current eighth-grade class. The State Board of Education, however, gave schools the ability to use it with students beginning in the class of 2018. Many districts took advantage of that opportunity and made it available to students who needed it including both Greenfield-Central and Mt. Vernon high schools.
One of the hallmark pieces of the graduation pathways program is that students must be able to demonstrate employability skills though service-based, project-based, or work-based learning experiences. The goal of this requirement is to make sure Indiana’s graduates have mastered workplace soft skills — showing up on time, being respectful, understanding boundaries, and exhibiting perseverance when needed — through coursework capstone projects, workplace experiences, or extended community service.
Stop and take a moment to think how innovative and forward-thinking Hancock County is for creating this out-of-the-box instructional model and making the most of local resources. Imagine for another moment what Greenfield and Hancock County could be if other local industries modeled programs after the aviation program. Can’t you just visualize upper-level manufacturing and logistics classes taught in one of our manufacturer’s buildings so students could see their lessons in action on the floor? Picture how well our students would be prepared for the workforce if experts in the field were providing the practical, every-day instruction necessary after two or three years of prerequisite classes. And, finally, how awesome would it be if Hancock County students could work together academically bringing our community just a little bit closer?
Hancock County has come a long way to in providing a modern curriculum for its students in many traditional areas, but we also have the capability of challenging one another to find those next generation programs and processes that make Hancock County students the most prepared the State of Indiana has to offer and, maybe, just maybe, keeping them here for ourselves.
Kim Kile is the director of school counseling at Greenfield-Central High School. She can be reached at [email protected]. Send comments to [email protected].
