For the 2014-2015 school year, the Career and Technical Education (CTE) department will add career pathways and change existing ones to benefit students all through the district.

“The CTE pathways include 14 different areas that we offer courses in that are defined by some federal regulations that everybody has to go by,” CTE director Becky Hunt said.

Allen High School currently offers 12 of the 16 available career clusters but will be adding two more in the coming school year.

“More courses and pathways are being added to give kids more opportunities and choices,” Hunt said.

CTE coordinators will be adding Information Technology and Law, Public Safety and Correction and Security to the already existinging Agriculture Science, Business Science, Communications and Media Arts Science, Health Science, Human Service Science, and Stem(Science, Technology and Engineering and Math)The only two career clusters not offered are Manufacturing and Transportation, and Distribution and Logistics.

“I think that there are lots of opportunities for students,” business teacher Sarah Goshgarian  said. “I think that the changes that are coming will help even more students who have interests in other fields for us to offer to those students.”

In addition,many pathways will be finished out by adding advanced classes for the upperclassmen who have already completed the prerequisites.

“[For] Information Technology we already had a few courses in that pathway that we were just calling technology, but we are formalizing it and letting it be its own pathway,”Hunt said.

Anyone can take any pathway or try many different pathways to find their best interests as Hunt said.

“College classes all cost money, but in high school they don’t, so it gives students an opportunity to take advantage of so many different fields of study,” Goshgarian said. “Then they can kind of get an idea of what they are really interested in before they get to college and have to start paying for those classes.”

When a student finishes a pathway, some pathways give an industry certification that helps them to gain immediate access to the industry they have been taking the classes.  In addition students who have taken any of the CTE classes leave with knowledge of the industry.

“They all leave with practical, real world skills that will benefit them wherever life leads them,” business teacher Kim Creel said.

Not only do these changes affect the students of Allen High School, they affect the teachers within the pathways as well.

“[The teachers] will probably gain more classes to teach,” Hunt said. “For instance we are adding a sports and entertainment marketing class, so we may have a teacher that is currently teaching a marketing class, and then they would add that to what they are already teaching.”

Since new classes are being added and specific experience is required to teach certain pathways, new teachers will be hired as well, Hunt said.

“We will be looking at whom to hire and trying to find the best applicant we can find that has worked in these clusters before,” Hunt said. “I would like to hire people that have real world experience.”

In each pathway students can work with other students who are as passionate about the same things they are, said Krista Luter, a Principles of Arts, AV, and Technology and Commercial Photography teacher.

“Even if you just find out something is not what you want to do, it is incredibly valuable,” Luter said.  “You can try out almost anything.”