When I talk with people from outside the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont about how St. Johnsbury Academy is unique, my first answer is always this: Career and Technical Education.

I recently shared with my professional network a story about our CTE electrical and plumbing programs’ partnership with the Vermont Department of Labor to allow students to get advanced apprenticeship experience while in high school–and I have never received as many responses. You have what? We have things like culinary arts, automotive technology, and business, too. For everyone? Yes, we have all that. For real? For real. 

The unique quality of our CTE program is one of the things that brings students from around the country and world to St. Johnsbury Academy, and I want folks to know the extent to which we consider it, need it, support it, love it, and are profoundly committed to making it the best of its kind.

There is no CTE “for real,” without a serious commitment to serving those talented, hardworking students who are here at the Academy to prepare for their next steps in a profession or trade. We serve them with physical facilities, with teachers who are themselves active professionals and artisans eager to share their expertise, with advisors and career counselors who admire them, with work-based learning opportunities in the local community, and with programs of study that are as strong as we can make them.

Sometimes I tell our students–just recently I did–that St. Johnsbury Academy brought me here in part because of my background in education. That background looks pretty scholarly–and scholarly in literature, no less–and the fact is I am proud of the years of study that gave me insight and skill in observation. My experience at other independent schools also gave me gifts that help me to see past superficial distinctions to the teenagers we teach and believe in.

And while none of that experience was quite like this, I feel grateful every day to have landed at the unique and precious institution that is St. Johnsbury Academy, and our CTE is a big part of why. 

Every year we see students earning recognitions: scholarships, championships, awards in fine and performing arts, academic accolades, and extraordinary college admits. A significant number of those students also have interests and aspirations that lead them straight to our CTE Center, where they find real kitchens, a working restaurant and auto shop, a woodworking studio, welding shop, and construction learning spaces. They find that as they gain skills they can also start learning at real workplaces: construction sites, schools, manufacturers, and hospitals. They earn medals at SkillsUSA at the state and national level. They earn credentials in trades like the apprenticeship I bragged about, and their experiences in CTE often lead to first jobs that become successful careers.

Here in St. Johnsbury and surrounding towns, Academy students are our future friends and neighbors. Their families make up the proud community that we are lucky enough to be thoroughly connected to in place and in spirit.

Our goal is for our CTE programs to be strong and comprehensive, especially critical ones such as construction trades. Re-envisioning a course takes time to get right, so over the coming year our department members will be hustling to research, develop a vision, collaborate with local experts, and build a program that meets the needs of the Kingdom and beyond. We need great builders, carpenters, woodworkers, electricians, plumbers and HVAC experts in the NEK to build housing and renovate every kind of structure, and more importantly to build the kinds of careers and businesses here that some of their families have built and stewarded for generations.

There is no other school just like ours. The Academy’s community is from everywhere, and our students have aspirations that are as different as can be, so they learn as much about the world from each other as they do from us. To me, Career and Technical Education is part of our mission that enriches and energizes the others, and lies at the heart of who we are–for real.