Penn Hills High School undertook an initiative this year that’s intended to give students the opportunity to graduate with something more than a diploma.
The high school launched PHorge (Penn Hills Organization for Research, Growth & Education) Academy to provide several forms of career education in-house so that students can earn the kinds of industry certifications that enhance standing in the job market even without post-secondary training. The Academy offers pathways in entrepreneurship, healthcare, information technology, and robotics.
With more students choosing career education, the Academy is one of a number of innovations taking place here and elsewhere to help students develop skills in fields that interest them; become better prepared for jobs right out of high school; or get a head start on post-secondary training programs. In another novel approach, featured in our October Spotlight, Central Westmoreland Career & Technology Center, is expanding its menu of programs and working with high schools to offer career pathways on their campuses that it can’t accommodate on its own.
Penn Hills School District’s Director of Technology & Innovation, Matt Dado, said the idea behind the new Academy wasn’t to compete with the district’s CTC, but rather to help students access career programming that’s not available at the CTC and enable them to stay on campus for all of their studies.
As an introduction to PHorge, 9th graders are offered a sort of tasting menu before deciding if they want to pursue one of the offerings as a main course beginning in freshman year. All 9th graders undertake nine-week rotations studying Robotics, Information Technology, and Entrepreneurship. As part of the experience, they can earn certification in Mechanical Foundations as part of the Robotics pathway.
The experience not only serves as a form of career exploration, it also gives students hands-on learning experiences that help them develop workplace skills such as communication, problem-solving, and collaboration, Dado said.
When students begin freshman year, they can pursue one of the pathways they sampled; enter the Academy’s Healthcare pathway, which isn’t available until 10th grade; or stick exclusively with the high school’s standard academic program. PHorge students also still participate in the standard program.
Although PHorge got off the ground this year, it’s continuing to expand rapidly. At launch, it had a few community partnerships developing, but Dado said the district hopes for more.
“We want to find partners and be able to funnel students into jobs whether they end up going to technical school or college through those opportunities,” he added.
At the moment, PHorge can help robotics students who achieve the necessary certifications enter pre-apprenticeship training with Catalyst Connection, or Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Academy. In addition, it’s working with Neighborhood Learning Alliance to create paid internships in information technology, and is already enlisting information technology students to do tech support on the high school’s own help desk.
In addition to industry partners, PHorge also is exploring post-secondary partnerships to help students earn credits before graduating.
If he had to write a mission statement, Dado said he’d say the whole idea is “to give students more,” from opportunities and seeing what’s possible to certifications to put on their resumes.
At the same time, he’s quick to point out that the traditional high school experience is still there for all students. “We didn’t take anything away from the traditional high school model.”
