Hundreds of Santa Barbara’s junior high school students got to learn about the various articulated academy and career technical programs offered at the Santa Barbara Unified School District’s high schools on Wednesday during the High School Program Showcase.
The showcase featured 18 career technical education programs, 13 visual and performing arts programs, five programs of choice, and four student resources at the Earl Warren Showgrounds on Wednesday for prospective students and their families to check out.
“These children are experiencing a variety of pathways — today, they may want to be in culinary arts; tomorrow, they might want to be a programmer; the next day, they may want to be an astronaut,” Dr. Hilda Maldonado, SBUSD’s superintendent, said on Wednesday. “We want to make sure we expand their horizons. We learn how to integrate things in a different way because we want to meet today’s 21st century learners.”
Santa Barbara High School senior Gilbert Herrera was drawn to the Visual Arts & Design Academy because of the access to art supplies and the opportunity to hear from professionals in the field, but he said his favorite part about the program has been the community he found within the classes.
“I honestly just love that I’m with the same people all the time just because we get to know each other’s styles and really see what we’re working on and see how someone’s expanding on their style,” Herrera said. “It’s a really supportive community.”
The Visual Arts & Design Academy focuses on the fundamentals of art, which includes shading, sculpture, and graphic design.
Daniel Barnett, who is a teacher at Santa Barbara High School and director of the VADA program, told Noozhawk that he has seen students from the program go on to get into colleges for arts, receive scholarships and secure internships at local design firms.
“I interview every kid that leaves the program when they graduate, and a common thing that I hear is that they wouldn’t have made it through high school without the program,” Barnett said. “The kind of stuff that they get to do at school in this program, it retains them, it keeps them interested.”
All three of SBUSD’s high schools offer a culinary program. For San Marcos High School senior Daniela Vargas, the program inspired her to become a pastry chef.
“The more and more I got to learn, the more I really wanted to become a pastry chef, and now I’m trying to fulfill that,” Vargas said.
Even though her interest is in becoming a pastry chef, her favorite part of the program was learning how to make soups and sandwiches.
A new program offered to students this year is the translation and interpretation program available at Santa Barbara High School. That pathway is for students who want to develop the necessary skills to become an interpreter or translator.
“We have so many students that enter the school district who are bilingual, and this academy and pathway will really highlight and build on those already brought skills to the school,” Maldonado said.
In Dos Pueblos’ Construction Technology program, students learn how to use woodworking tools to make skateboards, bowls, cutting boards and even furniture.
“Once you establish yourself and learn how to use all the tools, you can really just make whatever you want,” said Theresa Terlinden, a Dos Pueblos student in the Construction Technology program.
Terlinden said she got inspired to join the program by seeing TV characters in wood shop classes. When she first took one of the classes during her ninth-grade year, she was one of three girls in the class, but Terlinden said she’s made friends in the program and enjoys proving that girls in the class can do anything the guys can do.
“It’s a really fun class,” Terlinden said. “Learning the skill can take you into a lot of trades. If you take wood shop, you can really establish yourself and you can get a lot of connections to construction and carpentry in Santa Barbara, which will help you establish a career right out of high school.”
