Rich Township 227 adds career training opportunities
Rich Township District 227 officials celebrated the expansion of the science, technology, engineering and math campus to prepare students for careers in horticulture, construction, aviation and automotive technology during a ceremony Wednesday.
The $16 million, 32,000-square-foot addition to the district’s STEM campus at Olympia Fields is the latest in a years-long series of construction projects aimed at increasing offerings for students at the district’s three schools.
“We have students who are very interested in these types of programs, and we thought if we could offer them to them, we could better prepare them when they leave us for the work they would like to do,” said Antoinette Rayburn, who directs the STEM campus’ health and human services academy.
As freshmen, Rich Township High School students are offered multiple opportunities for career exploration before declaring an academy to attend during their sophomore year and taking introductory level courses in their chosen discipline.
Rayburn said she and other leaders in the Career and Technical Education programs at the STEM Campus as well as the Richton Park Fine Arts and Communications Campus serve as a bridge as students plan their postsecondary futures.
“Just working with teachers and helping them engage students with the industry knowledge they have,” Rayburn said. “They’re not traditional teachers. (They’re) teachers from an industry like this. They pass on their knowledge directly to students.”
New spaces included as part of the school expansion allow horticulture students to grow vegetables and herbs, help aviation students practice flying in simulation modules and give automotive technology students, like junior Antwan Jackson, experience working on cars and other vehicles in a workshop environment.
“I’ve been into cars my whole life,” Jackson said. “For as long as I can remember, it’s been my thing and my passion.”
Entering high school, Jackson said his decision to pursue the automotive technology program offered to him seemed “automatic.” He said he was grateful for the opportunity to take on the work that would be required of him in a related career.
“It definitely made me feel like this is something I could wake up every day and proudly say I’m ready to do,” Jackson said, adding that he looks forward to using the foundational skills he learned in college with the goal of getting into a motorsports engineering program.
In the STEM School’s new botany and horticulture lab, junior Jennifer Hymon was excited to show off her efforts to make essential oils from ingredients she and other agricultural science students have grown.
“We plan to sell these in the future,” Hymon said, pointing to a lavender scented oil. “The longer you let them marinate, the better they smell.”
Hymon was relieved to have the opportunity to learn about agriculture in high school, saying, “I literally didn’t see myself in anything else. »
She said that before starting at Rich Township High School’s STEM campus, she worried about the prospect of going to college despite her interest in agriculture, because she didn’t think she could have learned enough about the field herself to feel fully prepared. Today, she is confident in the skills she learned and her long-term interest in agriculture.
Hymon said that in addition to practicing growing and raising animals on campus, career and technical education professionals have provided him and other students with opportunities to learn directly from working professionals and visit working farms.
“I’m a very, very hands-on person,” Hymon said. “If I don’t put enough on the field, I’ll get bored and I’ll actually start to fail… so it’s literally perfect.”
Board of Trustees President Andrea Bonds said getting to Wednesday’s inauguration was “a daily struggle for our students, but it’s worth it.”
In 2019, the board voted to close Rich East High School in Park Forest, which Superintendent Johnnie Thomas hopes to transform into the Southland Career and Technical Education Center by 2028.
“School board members don’t always agree on everything, but they agree on things that are important to our children, and that allows us, the administrative team, to create wonderful things for our students,” he said. “I really hope that as you walk through this building you will see that it’s not just about the students, but the community as a whole… Everything we do plants a seed that allows our children to build and grow our community.
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
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