Career Track: Benefits in Technical Education

Pajaro Valley Students See Benefits in Technical Education

Colby Galassi
Watsonville High School

Colby is a third-year agriculture science student and FFA member. She is on track to be a program completor in the Sustainable Agriculture Pathway and is a well rounded student.

As a freshman Colby decided she was interested in learning more about agriculture so she signed up for Agriculture Biology and chose to continue in the pathway.

In biology she learned about the importance of working together and completing all of the hands-on labs.

In Ag Chemistry she focused on how to create and utilize sketchnotes to help understand notes later and is building upon these skills in her current Sustainable Agriculture class.

She is a top student and is able to show her growth in knowledge through her notebooks. She says the hands-on learning in her Agriculture Science classes has encouraged and inspired her to become an agriculture teacher herself.

She hopes to inspire other students to fall in love with agriculture and science through her own teaching one day.

Carlos Zamora-Campos
Pajaro Valley High School

This is my first computer-related class; I decided to give it a try and I think that was the best decision.

Programming 1 has been, so far, my favorite class ever, and no matter how challenging the topic is, Ms. Blanchette always finds a way to make it look like the easiest thing in the world.

We have special guests; something I really do appreciate and thanks to them we discovered a whole world of possibilities that programming opens to us.

Before this class I wasn’t really sure if I really wanted to go to college, now I really want to go and I’m going to try engineering. I can say that this class has changed my life.

Fernando Rodriguez-Garcia
Pajaro Valley High School

I have learned so much from this pathway, in IT Essentials I learned about computer technology, how computers work, how to build and take apart computers, as well as how to fix computers. I learned about networking, how computers link together to allow them to operate interactively.

In IT Essentials I also learned about security, how unauthorized access to computers, networks, and other data can occur and how to prevent it from happening.

I have learned so much from Programming 1; how to create programs using control structures, procedures, functions, parameters, variables, error recovery, and recursion. It taught me to feel proud of the work I do.

I learned to pay extremely close attention to the code I write to prevent issues. In Programming 1, I was intrigued to create something by writing code. I am fascinated by how interesting and enjoyable it is to learn programming.

In the future I plan to pursue a career as a data acientist.

Freddie Lopez
Pajaro Valley High School

I took coding in middle school and now Programming 1. I have learned that coding is very fun and time-consuming. Programming is like a puzzle where there’s a lot of trial and error. I think the puzzles are what has hooked me into liking coding and programming so much.

Something that intrigues me is when I learn something new and then see what my code has developed with what I learned. The pathway is fun and so is the satisfaction I feel when I finish a project. I plan to pursue a career related to this pathway like computer science or something with computers and technology.

I love programming and hope I can make a living off doing what I enjoy and am also good at. Careers around computers and technology usually pay well so that is another benefit.

Miguel Bolanos-Romero
Pajaro Valley High School

I have learned a lot in IT essentials and Programming 1 and have enjoyed every second of it because it is fun and there is always a solution.

Thus far in the pathway I have learned how to use many different functions throughout the coding process. Also, I have learned how to take a computer apart and put it back together and what each part does to make a computer work.

What has intrigued me the most is the hands on computer work such as IT Essentials which was so fun especially writing code and seeing it executed felt so rewarding in the end. In the future, I would like to pursue this as my career in the future. I have other interests such as a trade school where I can go and learn more skills.

Both IT Essentials and Programming 1 have taught me so many other benefits such as teamwork, social skills and overall it has been such an amazing career experience.