Career Center? Is it Worth it?
December 3, 2019
The question about whether attending Career Center is worth it should not be a question at all. The benefits of going to the Career Center definitely outweigh the negatives. Career Center is an educational enterprise in Winston-Salem that has been serving as an extension of traditional high school since 1976.
It pulls from all of Forsyth County and around 2400 students attend the Career Center. It offers quality instruction, diversity in classes and a wide range of courses which makes the Career Center an unparalleled academic experience.
Maureen Stanford, a teacher at the Career Center thinks that it has a diverse population pulling from many different backgrounds.
“Here at the Career Center you get a wide range of students from other schools and so they’re bringing in their own background from where they live: socioeconomically and ethnically,” Stanford said. “They also have been taught by different teachers throughout the county so they come with different facts, different analytical strategies and when they all bring them together here its like going off to college. You can learn from other people different and new styles that you did not know before.”
Junior Grace Wilson, a student at RJ Reynolds and attendee of the Career Center, thinks the school’s schedule is more functional and the teachers are deeply invested in their students education.
“The schedule is a lot better with the shorter classes and the teachers seem more invested in the students grades and well-being,” Wilson said. “The administration is also more professional and understanding with the students.”
Wilson also thinks students at the Career Center have an academic advantage to those who do not attend.
“I think kids who go to Career Center have a better experience because they have the opportunity to interact with other students from around the county and everyone should consider going,” Wilson said. “Since the classes offered at Career Center are more advanced I think the kids who go there have an advantage because they want to learn and are willing to put in the effort to succeed.”
Career Center offers a wide range of classes that are not all available at their homeschools. Teachers at the Career Center see the big advantage of going to the Career Center.
Stanford is very knowledgeable about the history of the Career Center and why it was founded and what they wanted to accomplish.
“In 1976 when the Career Center was established there was “tracking” I guess you could say,” Stanford said. “It wasn’t necessarily to put a particular racial or socioeconomic group anywhere, the school was built to center on career tech so that students that wanted to go into automotive or electric etc could start on that path before they graduated.”
“As advanced placement became more popular, individual schools could not fund every teacher to have all the things needed for an AP course,” Stanford said. “So if they housed it all in one area they could bring the kids here and they could more economically offer more APs.
“For example, my high school didn’t have this opportunity so the most APs I could take for four years was five. Here in our county we have 38 AP courses offered, both dually and singly offered here.”
Senior Parker Lacewell who also attends Career Center gives her opinion on why Career Center is worth going to.
“I like being able to take challenging classes that aren’t offered at Reynolds. Career Center has a great environment! Everyone there wants to learn and better themselves its great to be around others who motivate me to push myself and try new challenging things,” Lacewell said.
Norman Hill • Mar 6, 2020 at 1:54 am
Absolutely the Career Center is worth it. It was worth it when I was there 1978-80 and I’m sure it’s worth it today. It is an enormous asset for WS/FC Schools!
Danny Green • Mar 5, 2020 at 9:44 pm
As a parent in Clemmons I absolutely did not think that my daughter having to drive down I-40 and Hwy 52 was worth anything that the Career Center had to offer. Bit she was near the top of her class and needed a couple of more AP classes. I was infuriated that both of those classes had enough West Forsyth students registered to have 2 and 4 full classes, respectively, on campus at West. The information in these classes is dispersed quickly. They are fact based, so opinions from other parts of our community just do not come into play. Whenever possible, AP classes should be taught at the home school. Surely it makes more sense to have one teacher drive around on our busy and dangerous highways taking the class to the students, than hundreds of young inexperienced drivers taking the same route to the teacher. (Yes, they have buses. But students usually have to eliminate the possibility of taking more classes to take that bus. Plus, that is still a much larger expense than sending the teacher to the students.) Teach any class that has enough students to take place at a home, at the home school. Safer and less expensive. Keep the Career Center only for cases where it is not possible to teach that class anywhere else.