High school is designed to prepare students for the rest of their lives. George Rogers Clark has always done a great job preparing their students and is now offering more ways for preparation.
GRC’s well-known journalism program, Smoke Signals, is now a state pathway: Media Arts. Students who start out in Intro to Media Arts their freshman year gain the opportunity for different certifications. These certifications in Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects can aid anyone in any job.
GRC’s other fantastic new state pathway is Industrial Maintenance. This pathway gives you the opportunity to learn about different things in the industrial field from plumbing to the electrical world. This class prepares our students excellently for the industry and allows them to get into the job field quickly.
Media Arts at GRC is still called Smoke Signals for juniors and seniors. There is more focus on what each grade works on and it gets more advanced as students move from freshman to senior year. The specific pathway that GRC focuses on is Cinematography and Video Production.
Industrial Maintenance centralizes itself on electrical engineering. It focuses on tasks of fixing electrical circuits on machinery, rather than electrician roles. It is not necessarily installation of electrical, but primarily troubleshooting.
Media Arts teaches many students about very positive life skills. Beyond the certifications, this pathway teaches skills that will help in all aspects of life, no matter what job field you decide to go into.
“I think students should take the Media Arts pathway because it sets them up not just for careers in media, but a lot of careers in the workforce,” said Media Arts instructor Hagan Wells. “A lot of the skills that we cover, whether it’s editing things or creating videos and graphics. General communication skills are all things that are really going to help a lot of our students to be successful after high school.”
The Industrial Maintenance pathway allows for kids to be able to get a jumpstart on the career in industry that they want.
“We could get into companies like Ale-8, Catalit, and Freedom Corp,” Industrial Maintenance instructor Randall Hoskins said.”There are multiple factories around, big or small. This will allow us to help students their senior year get a job already in industry, starting out making decent money. Then if they want to go on and get an associate degree or whatever they wanna do, they can. But the goal of it is, ‘Let’s get them working.’”
All in all, state pathways are here for our school’s benefit. I would highly recommend students looking into joining these pathways. They will not only allow you to have fun in school, but also aid you in the long run.
