With class selection for the 2019-2020 school year starting, students already have a good idea of what classes they are going to take. However, they might not have thought about the Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes that BDHS offers when making their decisions.

CTE classes teach skills that are beneficial to everyday life and skills that can help someone join the workforce right out of high school. So often, people assume that high school students want to go right to college, but there are plenty of students who want to work for a year or two, or want to start working right away. CTE can also give students an idea of what they might want to study in high school. At a county level, the program makes sure that a job fair is offered to help students with the first step of entering the working world.

BDHS offers a myriad of these classes, including business, construction, engineering and technology, nutrition and culinary, landscaping and turf management, personal finance, horticulture, and sports medicine. These classes, besides covering the necessary curriculum, have a lot of hands-on work that benefits the school as a whole. For example, the culinary classes made ice cream that they shared with the school at the beginning of the school year, business classes are becoming more involved with the Future Business Leaders of America and working with them on many charity events, including Toys for Tots and food drives.

Perhaps most notable, though, is the award-winning work done by the Turf Program here at BDHS. In 2018, the football field won the Sports Turf Management Association 2018 Field of the Year Award and a National Field of Excellence by Pioneer Athletics. These awards would not have been possible without all of the hard work students have put into the field.

While no specifics have been planned for next year, Mrs. Loretta Bryant-Kline, one of the CTE teachers, promises that it will be just as eventful, if not more, than this year. Students who are looking for classes that not only keep them involved in the community, but give them skills that they can carry through the rest of their lives, should look into one of these classes.