(stirring orchestral music) (stirring orchestral music continues) Businesses have been coming to Alabama for the past few decades because they tell us we have great workers.

And so we've gotta continue to provide those kinds of workers for Alabama's economy in the 2030s and beyond.

They really want people who have hands-on experience in high school so that they're building things, they're creating things, but they're also learning how to solve problems.

And our CTE programs, all 16 clusters, they do that.

They introduce students to problems and help students gain the skills to solve those problems.

(gentle orchestral music) Career Tech programs across our state are impacting our children in so many ways.

They're some of the most important things we do.

We're completely committed to the future through Career Tech.

(funky electronic music) We are at the Career Technical Educational Center in Shelby County School System in Columbia and Alabama.

And we are currently in automotive technology.

We also have collision next door.

They're just phenomenal programs.

This program is designed to teach students the eight basic categories through ASE, engine repair, brakes, steering, and suspension, air conditioning, transmissions, electrical, all the basics to get you prepared to go into the workforce right after high school.

So we have certifications, ASE, Ford.

Which are industry recognized certifications that are required when they go into industry.

Everything out here is hands-on.

I can actually learn and get a feel for what's going on.

I can actually see the way it moves instead of just reading it on how it's supposed to work.

Well, not only do I teach 'em how to work on a car, I teach 'em how to work period, work ethics, getting to work on time, being properly dressed for work, teach 'em about how to talk to the customers when it comes to fixing their cars, not just fixing the cars.

(funky electronic music continues) This is collision repair.

Basically, we do anything that would pertain to the automotive painting, body work, collision repair.

If you wreck your car, you need a paint job, we're the ones you come see.

All the things you'll normally do in here is customer work.

They actually belong to someone.

So it has to be done and done correctly so it can be delivered.

It's helped me get into the industry more, like got my first job through here working at a Ford dealership for a while, and then also later in life I want to open my own shop.

You can apply basically everything you learn here into opening your own business.

We wouldn't exist without our industry partners.

The local dealerships, Edwards Chevrolet, Long-Lewis Ford hires my students.

Several businesses incorporate their business into my program, which enables them to get employees.

Being able to help guide these young men to find their way other than trouble, it enables them to come to a program like this, learn something and then potentially go to work.

And they come back two years from now and show me paychecks.

And that's really, really something that I appreciate.

(gentle acoustic music) The students we have in school today are going to be the workers of the 2030s and 2040s.

We wanna make sure that they have the opportunities and they have the skills to be productive, to be active citizens, and to give back to Alabama.

We want those students to stay in Alabama, and we want them to have the opportunity to raise their families here but also to make really good incomes.

(gentle piano music) We're at Shades Valley High School in Irondale, Alabama, and this is the Academy of Finance.

Not everyone is interested in finance, but finance is part of everybody's lives.

We teach principles of accounting, we teach financial planning, we teach principles of finance.

We also have an entrepreneurship class.

We teach global business, customer service and sales, and some marketing classes.

(adventurous orchestral music) So this program has really helped me get out of my shell, because I used to be very reserved, I didn't really wanna speak to nobody, I only spoke to them if they came up to me.

It gave me a lot of leadership opportunities, because it introduced me to FBLA, which I'm president of that club.

So just knowing how to network, go from person to person, form a group and then we can all do the same thing together so it won't be as hard.

It's helped me learn how to communicate so much better.

It's just great opportunities that I wouldn't have had if I wasn't in here.

This program is affiliated with Future Business Leaders of America.

So that puts students in a position to be able to network with students from all over the country, that they form lasting friendships and lasting partnerships that they take with them into the rest of their lives.

What makes me proud of the program is basically the partnerships and the connections they're making outside of the school.

I have an accountant that comes in once a week and she will teach my accounting class.

I have a stock person, she's coming in, and she's working with them on the stock market.

The key to this particular finance program is exposure.

Again, it works.

When a student comes back to us, and they are telling us their success stories that, "Hey, I have this great job, and it's all because you exposed me through that work-based learning opportunity.

Or we went to state conference with FBLA and I met this person, and now I'm interning with them this summer.

That is success is when our students to go to the next level, whatever that looks like for them.

(calm orchestral music) Every child, every chance, every day.

That's a big slogan of our State Department of Education.

As a lifelong educator, I believe that we have a moral and ethical duty to children to give them opportunities in life.

And that means every child, and it means that we go to work to do that every single day.

Every child gets every chance, every day.

We're at Lincoln High School, and we are currently standing in a tiny house built in the building construction program.

(students chatter faintly) The beautiful thing I like about our program is we give an environment for students to learn how to do construction.

So we always talk about we want 'em ready for the workforce.

So once they get on a job, they not necessarily always have that nurturing environment where they have the opportunity to mess up and it'd be okay.

That's what we provide to 'em.

So we give them those learning opportunities, a safe space for them to learn the things that they need to learn.

I've learned safety, tool management, just basic tool operation like drills, hammers, nails, saws, blueprints and how to read those.

If it's not to the 16th, then he won't take it so you gotta go back and cut it again.

So that's what I like about him.

He makes sure you're doing everything perfect.

(stirring orchestral music) It's a safe place to learn.

You get to know each other a lot better.

And at the end of the year, I feel like I've known everybody in here for years, like my whole life.

The thing that I've enjoyed the most about this program is working on the tiny house.

It's so fun.

I mean it's just fun to be able to see your project come from just a trailer to a big house.

So they get to see electrical, they get to see the plumbing, they get to see the framing.

We might roof today, we might paint today, we might caulk today.

The purpose behind that is so maybe they say, "Well, I really like the painting," or, "I really like the plumbing."

So we want to just expose 'em to as many things as we can.

And then at the end, let them sort of, "Hey, I really like to do that.

That's where I'm gonna put my future into."

So that's why I like the program, 'cause we're not always doing the same thing every day.

We'll let people come here, look at it for a couple of days, we'll auction it off, and whatever we make from that, we'll build the next one.

And we'll also put some to school programs and stuff like that.

(uplifting orchestral music continues) Our main goal is to prepare these students to go out into the world and be able to earn a good living, to raise and care for their families and be a useful part of society.

But realistically, I want them to go away from here with an attitude that, one of my sayings is figure out how to figure it out.

You may never know all the answers, but you can learn enough that you can figure out how to figure it out.

I like to say that we're not just building structures here, we're building lives.

We try to expose 'em to as much as we can to give them the brightest future possible.

(gentle piano music) So one of the things we want to do is make sure that our businesses all across the state are connected to our high schools.

So for instance, in North Alabama, we do have several of our Career Tech programs that are directly connected to either NASA or to one of the contractors that works with NASA.

And so they're doing real life projects, which we hope not only gives back to the community and provides something useful for that business, but more importantly what we hope is that it makes a student think about, "Oh my gosh, this is really something I can do that I enjoy, that's a passion within me, but it also is a way to make a living, and it's a way to stay in Alabama."

The more we can give students skills and opportunities and connect them to businesses in Alabama, the better off we all are.

(upbeat electronic music) My name is Jessie Hendrix, and we are at Houston County Career Academy, and this is the marketing program.

(students applaud) When they come in from the get-go, I tell 'em it's a fluid program.

I'll tell 'em all the different parts of marketing, and I'll say, "Okay, so based on that, tell me, what are you the most interested in?"

I adjust my teaching to make sure that we expand on the things that they're interested in and on their skill levels.

It's more of a hands-on learning, which is a break from my homeschool, 'cause I'm just sitting at a desk, but here I get to just spread my wings and do what I want, and I have a lot more say in what I'm doing.

So my future career is I wanna have my own business, and I want to have my own clothing lines where I help with a lot of teenagers and young adults with self body image issues and that kind of thing.

The marketing program helps me a lot with that, just because it helps a lot with presenting.

So actually getting out there and trying to tell people about my business, and then learning how to sell my stuff and get a good audience and target market and that kind of stuff.

They had a marketing internship program that they wanted to kind of work with us, and I think we did a scholarship program for them for the winner.

So they came out and did some marketing programs for us.

It was outside the box, it was creative, it was great.

It helped us sell some campers and hopefully got some good experience out at the same time.

We had the kids come and tour both our store and our warehouse and office facility, and that really just gave them an idea of what it's like to work behind the scenes for a company like Eagle Eye.

And then they worked on their pitching skills, and we came and did a pitching workshop, and we judged a pitching competition where they got to give us a student athlete and tell them why they would be a great fit to represent our brand.

So the fact that these kids get to have that opportunity is really cool.

We'll be hiring people for those positions.

So it's really great that maybe they don't even have to go to college for that because there's a program like this, they can come straight outta high school and come into a field like that, and helping us as a company and helping them further their career right away.

I like to brag about my students.

I think I've got the best students in the state, and I just, I see so much potential in them, and I want them to get into the workforce.

I want them to be successful when they go get jobs or whatever it is that they're gonna do.

So definitely working with those partnerships with these business industry people, it helps open so many doors for them.

(soft acoustic music) We see those stories of students who are looking for their career.

They're looking for their path forward, whether that means going to college or going straight to work, and through a hands-on program, they find that passion that really leads them to do something in life they really enjoy.

(uplifting orchestral music) We're at DeKalb County Technology Center located here in Rainsville, Alabama, and we're looking at the criminal justice program.

We have a outstanding partnership with our local municipalities, and especially our sheriff's department.

What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to bring back public relations.

I'm trying to teach kids how to interact with the public, but I'm also trying to teach them how to understand, just pull, and the proper ways of handcuffing, doing a traffic stop, a DUI arrest.

Learned how to do fingerprints in crime scenes, and learned how to do sobriety tests.

[Joshua] Steady.

And it's just, we learn a lot in this class.

A lot of it is just making sure that they understand what giving back to the community is about.

It gives 'em an opportunity to either pursue a career in law enforcement, but even if they don't go the route in law enforcement, they have an understanding of -what law enforcement does.

-Notes, remember.

When you see what they have to go through.

We watch videos of them getting chased down, and it's just they help us, the whole community, every single day, and it's just awesome what they do.

I want to be an attorney, and I just love learning about public safety.

It just gives me an overview of what I would learn in the academy.

I'm just ahead of everybody because I already know these things, so when I go to the academy, it'll help me get through the program.

Us and the fire department fall under the umbrella of public safety.

So it is a requirement that you have to get your telecommunication.

At 18, I'm 18 now, and I can become a dispatcher if I wanted to as soon as I graduate.

So it gets their foot in the door as they pursue if they decide they wanna be a patrolman, or they want to be an investigator later on, or they even say we've got a few -that wants to be a lawyer.

-(instructor chatters faintly) When they reach their career goals at a later date, they're gonna have a understanding of how everything works, and it's gonna make them a better officer, it's gonna make them a better lawyer, it's gonna make them a better dispatcher.

[Nick] Our youth is motivated.

Try to keep it.

They love what's going on, it's given 'em a new drive in life to see things.

And I think that's our part as my role and the role here at the tech school is we're on the same page of motivating and modeling the youth for the better of the future.

(gentle orchestral music) What we have to do today is to make sure our Career Tech programs are not just preparing students for the jobs of today, and certainly not just for the jobs of yesterday.

We have to think ahead, what are the skills that we need to give young people, so that as things change in the 2030s and 2040s and beyond, and things will change, that those students are able to adapt and they're able to use the skills they have today to be productive no matter what happens in the future of this economy.

(gentle acoustic music) We are at Tuscaloosa County High School in Northport, Alabama, and this is the health science program.

Health science is a Career Tech program for kids who are interested in the medical field.

Just tell me when to give it.

Well, what's unique about this program is honestly the hands-on experience.

[Marla] They learn how to take vital signs, they learn how to transfer patients from a bed to a wheelchair or to a stretcher.

We learn about injections as well as medicine and dosages.

And just it gives them that opportunity to get their feet wet in the field and make sure that that's truly their calling in life.

One of the big pushes for us is that our youngsters have an opportunity to a credential, a credential that will follow them -after they leave high school.

-Gastritis.

[Dennis] It may be something like patient care technician.

And you can start working in a hospital right out of high school with just that certification.

And our teacher, Ms. Workman, who is phenomenal, can actually offer that certification.

Get them out before.

The, I guess, most fun that they have is they get the opportunity to participate in clinicals at various healthcare facilities in the community.

I've shadowed at three locations so far.

There I've been able to watch root canals, tooth extractions, and fillings for cavities, which are super cool.

You have to be CPR-certified to take this course, because some kids who have ridden on an EMS have actually had to perform CPR.

So even as kids here in high school, we know exactly what to do in the case of an emergency, which is really, really fun.

I love seeing the kids when they come in from the internships, and they've experienced something new, whether it be the birth of a child, or they got to go on a cool ambulance ride, and see something amazing, maybe somebody's life being saved, and they come in with this renewed sense of purpose of what there's to do in life.

And that to me is what all of this is about.

(gentle electronic music) Multiple places across the state, culinary programs, have cooked meals for me.

So I've had everything from a good steak to a delicious cake to cupcakes, and what I find, though, is not only is the food really good, but the students are learning such skills, not just the skills of cooking, which are really important, but they're learning how to work together.

They're learning how to fail and then go back and redo the recipe and succeed later.

My name is Amanda Talantis, and I am the instructor for hospitality and tourism at Gulf Shores High School.

So we're a beach town, and everything revolves around tourism here.

So we're really driving that point home with our students, that, "Hey, we have to be good stewards of this environment so that we continue to have this awesome tourism industry."

It really gives me hands-on experience in the field and the industry.

So it gets me more comfortable in these types of situations, and I really enjoy it.

We're preparing these students to go out into the hospitality and tourism industry with this sort of sustainable mindset.

They take hospitality and tourism with me and then they can go on to culinary one, culinary two, baking and pastry.

It's amazing to see a student walk in in hospitality and tourism, have zero knife skills, have zero kitchen knowledge, and then be able to hold a knife correctly, cut vegetables correctly, produce an actual entree or a dish that they're proud to present.

My dad was a cook, so I like following into his footsteps.

Since I love cooking, I think it's a great way to express yourself as a person as well.

The biggest level of success for me is when they come back after a weekend and they say, "Guess what I made for my family this weekend?"

(gentle electronic music continues) And this year we've added event planning, which I'm also teaching and very excited about.

So the Farm to Table event is an event that's happened two years in the past.

It takes place at our high school out in our kind of outdoor kitchen parking lot area, right outside our greenhouse.

And it's an event to get community members or just people interested involved and to know what we do here at Gulf Shores High School.

We get local shrimp, local oysters, and then local produce.

And we also take things from our greenhouse that we grow and we cook them with our culinary program.

(gentle electronic music continues) (singers vocalize) We also do Earth Day festival, which is really big.

Our hospitality and tourism group makes chocolate pretzels, lemonade, just the eco-friendly easy things that all of us can make together that's quick and gets us outside to encourage and teach everybody about Earth Day, 'cause a bunch of people don't understand about recycling, and so I've learned a lot from hospitality and tourism with Miss Talantis.

So it's really helped me out as a student and get to better the world and keep it green.

It really is about hands-on learning and hands-on thinking, so that our students are working together, they're solving real problems, but more importantly, they're learning to solve problems together.

(mellow electronic music) We are at Opelika High School featuring the engineering STEM program.

I think the main skills that the students learn in this program is how to actually apply their learning.

So they'll learn the theory in the classroom, whether that's through the teacher instructing or the SolidWorks program, but then they actually have to take what they have learned and apply it through the design process to solve a real-world problem.

Getting a problem to work on with CAD and then having to figure out how I wanted to design it, how I wanted to CAD it up, and then actually executing it and seeing it work is just, it's the best feeling.

Engineering is a great way, a great medium for expressing your creativity and design.

People like think that it's all cold calculations and stuff, but there's a lot of personality and ideas that go into making a machine, 'cause there's no one right way to do things.

So we started in 2018, and we've been at four in-person competitions and we've made it to worlds in three of those years.

So as you're doing this, you're interacting with teams from other countries.

We literally were out there on the field with a team from Turkey and a team from Mexico, and none of the kids could speak to each other, and they had to come up with a strategy because to play the other alliance they were playing against.

Leadership, teamwork, cooperation with people that you never even worked with before or that you don't talk to.

One of the things I'm most proud of is it's a student-run team.

I mean they're the ones doing it, they're the ones running it.

I don't stay in the pit with them.

I don't fix the robot.

I don't know how to program the robot.

It's beyond my expertise level.

And so that makes me super proud that it is to, they figure it out.

When it doesn't work, they figure it out.

When it does work, they can pat themselves on the back.

I've also grown a lot as a person and filled up a much larger leadership role than I ever thought I could.

It's like coming out, I think I had a very authoritative mode when it came to working with a team, and then, over time, you learn to let other people take reins and use their ideas more than yours.

When we all put our ideas together for how to solve problems, and we don't just hoard 'em or keep 'em to ourselves, then we have a better chance of fixing some of the biggest problems in the world.

And they're learning that through robotics.

(bright electronic music) Our CTE programs, from the very beginning, are based in the idea that we're gonna provide hands-on experiences, we're gonna provide real-world problem solving, and we're also gonna do good things that give back to the community.

So almost all our programs, whether they work through a student organization or they through a class project, they're giving back to their communities too.

(stirring orchestral music) My name is Robbie Durr, I'm the Career Tech director for Chickasaw City Schools, and today we are spotlighting our architecture and construction program led by instructor Mr. Brian Copes.

Our kids are learning the construction process, they're getting the NCCR core.

[Robbie] And so the students are learning framing, they're learning electrical, they're doing flooring, they're doing insulation, but they're also.

[Brian] Learning how to use their skills to help others.

We're making a container project that has wifi and computers in it to help third world countries like Honduras, Guatemala, for kids who don't have wifi or power like that.

They're not just sitting in a classroom learning how to do the measurements and building the floor and the framing, they're actually having an opportunity to go to these places and go to Honduras or Peru or wherever the next container may be going and see why what they have done is so important and what it means to other students.

And so they really get to make that connection.

[Brian] We've also been donated this house that we're standing in, 306 6th Street property, and this is a historical home.

So the students aren't remodeling it, they're refurbishing it.

So far we have completely taken the plaster off the walls and multiple rooms on the second floor.

So we're almost done with the second floor.

We gotta go to the first floor, take the walls out, They're bringing it back to life.

This program prepares me for my future 'cause it allows me to learn about construction.

It gives me a hands-on instead of being behind a computer and looking at stuff.

I'm hands-on so I know what to do and how to do it.

(stirring orchestral music) After school, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I've been making prosthetic legs.

My students have made over about 130 legs this calendar year, but we have gone on, I think it's five or six trips into Latin America where not only do the kids get to 3D print the legs, but we go into Latin America and the kids actually get to fit amputees with legs that we've created here in the classroom.

We tell the kids that they can change the world, but we never teach 'em how to change the world.

So I use Career Tech, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's construction, and we pull in those core subject matters.

So by pulling them into a CTE project, we're teaching the kids how to change the world, and to me that's what makes us unique.

(stirring orchestral music)