BASEHOR-LINWOOD
A/V COMMUNICATIONS NEWSLETTER
FALL 2015 It’s been a busy semester in the A/V Communications department and it’s hard to believe that it is quickly coming to a close. We are excited about what is happening with the Career and Technical Education program at Basehor-Linwood. In April 2015 the community passed a bond issue, which included plans to construct a CTE wing of the high school. Administrators have been meeting with architects to plan out what the space will look like, and they are hoping for ground to be broken in January 2016, with a tenative opening date of fall 2017. With the help of CTE instructors, Basehor-Linwood senior Gabey Ross and A/V instructor Kristen Loney have worked this semester to build a CTE website for the school district. We are hoping to roll out the website within the next month or two so students and parents can use it as a resource as they plan out their class schedules for the coming year. In addition to the website, A/V instructors Justin Oberndorfer and Kristen Loney created short videos that illustrate each career pathway offered at BLHS. District CTE coordinator Jarred Fuhrman and counselor Vicky Herbster presented the videos to 8th grade students on Dec. 9, 2015.
Our hope for the website and videos is that they are useful tools to educated on what classes we offer in career pathways. We would love to see more students work through our pathways, which would lead to internship opportunities by their senior year. The first step in this is educating students about their options as early on as 8th grade. To assist with this, we have created flowcharts to show suggested course paths for the classes within our career pathways, which can be seen on the following page. The driving goal of our emphasis on career pathways and CTE is to prepare students to leave high school with a good idea of what they want to do vocationally and to give them some career-specific skills as they leave to pursue a vocation or
postsecondary education, whether that be technical school, community college, or a four-year college. The A/V communications department specifically is striving to provide students with real career experience in many different ways, which include but are not limited to: broadcasting and producing sporting events, creating and selling newsmagazines and yearbooks, and creating design work for different entities within the school district. While the means by which we accomplish this change rapidly, our goal remains the same: give students practical experience in A/V career fields and set them up for success once they leave Basehor-Linwood High School.