CAREER + TECHNICAL
Skill-based education goes beyond the traditional classroom experience giving students employable technical knowledge with hands-on, real-world applications. Career and Technical Education helps students grow their mindset and… visualize career ambitions, while also expanding our community’s workforce.
The Middle School Trades Exploration program has gone above and beyond fostering career interests and equipping our future workforce with useful and hirable skills. Thanks to the curriculum, students have an outlet for creativity while building strong connections to learning during the pandemic.
Last summer, BEF supported a pilot summer program that brought manufacturing careers to life for 40 middle school students. They spent two weeks at Westview High School designing their projects and learning how to use hand power tools and computer-controlled technology. Students learned to make signs from reclaimed metal and wood they repurposed from old pallets and chairs.
Piloting programs that take a new idea and prove its effectiveness is at the core of what BEF does, says Kristine Baggett, BEF’s executive director. “With the summer trades exploration program, we want to help create a pipeline in Beaverton schools by exciting middle schoolers about what’s to come in high school.”
Each academic year, BEF mobilizes community resources and strives to fund classroom projects at all 54 Beaverton public schools and to impact every student’s education through our after school and summer cornerstone programs. Funds donated pay for programs and projects not mandated or funded by the state, but ones parents and dedicated educators consider necessary for a quality education.
See how donors like you have made a difference throughout the district.