photo by: Emma Delk

John Marshall High School juniors William Paxson, left, and Siriniti Wayt, right, shared what the Prostart Restaurant Management program had to offer during the CTE Showcase on Friday.

The first floor of John Marshall High School was filled with career and technical education students eager to show what their programs have to offer during the county CTE Showcase on Friday.

The yearly exposition helps John Marshall and Cameron high school sophomores decide which CTE programs they want to pursue during their junior and senior years.

“The students apply for (CTE) programs just as if they’re applying for a job, and they go through an interview process to be in a program,” Marshall County Schools career and technical education counselor Melanie Knutsen said. “Students are selected based on their grade point average, attendance and discipline. Our programs are very competitive to get into, so we have to have some way to select students for each program.”

John Marshall offers 18 CTE programs, and Cameron offers four. Cameron students who want to enter a CTE program not offered at their school can be bused to John Marshall to take the class.

Due to Marshall County Schools having a two-hour delay on Friday, Cameron students were not able to attend the showcase. Knutsen, who organizes the showcase, said a make-up showcase for Cameron students was being scheduled.

All 18 John Marshall CTE programs, from welding to culinary arts, were represented at the showcase. Knutsen said each CTE program project manager was in charge of organizing the tables, including what information they shared and demonstrations they performed.

“At the automotive technology table, they are actually showing students how to take lug nuts out of a tire,” Knutsen said. “At the robotics table down the hall, the students have their robots out to demonstrate what they can do with them. I think it’s really important for students to learn how to present their program and share it with younger students at the school.”

John Marshall senior Madison Galloway, who is in the therapeutic services program, said they decided to demonstrate the “hands-on” skills students learn in the nursing program. Therapeutic services students were stationed at the table showing sophomores how to take blood pressure, pulse and heart rate readings.

“We chose to demonstrate these skills because they’re simple and get the students ready for the program,” Galloway said. “I feel really privileged to be able to do this because I know a lot of other schools don’t have programs like this where students can get hands-on experience early.”

While Galloway was interested in joining the therapeutic services program before she came to John Marshall, she noted that attending the CTE Showcase as a sophomore made her certain she wanted to join the program.

“Once I came to the fair and met some of the people in the program, it really did inspire me to join, especially when I was able to see everything that I could do in the program,” Galloway said.

Knutsen noted that even if CTE students decide not to enter the same field in the future, they will still have “transferable skills” they can use throughout their lives.

“The showcase brings the fact to light for students that they can be a part of these programs, even if they don’t end up doing them as a career,” Knutsen said. “In the future, they will get transferable skills they can use in other fields. We’ve had welders come out and become teachers, and we’ve had kids in automotive technology take the program just to learn how to work on a car.”