YV-Tech summer program provides students with hands-on skill…

On the ground floor of YV-Tech, students in the school’s electrical classroom were wiring four-way light switches, doorbells and power breakers from scratch Thursday.

Upstairs, four students in the drones and automation classroom gathered gear and walked outside to a patch of asphalt. They got clearance from the Yakima airport through an app and minutes later lifted a drone into the air, taking aerial photos of the campus.

They’re among roughly 470 students spending the first three weeks of summer learning hands-on skills in one of 17 programs at the Yakima Valley Technical Skills Center.

Others are studying dental care, firefighting, nursing, culinary arts, auto collision repair and business administration, just to name a few of the classes offered.

A week ago, most students didn’t know the basics of these trades. But through the 14-day, 90-hour summer term, they’re getting a taste of the skill sets the technical school offers during the regular school year.

Brianna Galindo, 15, will be a sophomore at Davis High School this fall. After that, she hopes to return to YV-Tech to study in the electrical program, which she’s sampling this summer.

“I didn’t know about the wires,” she said as she wired a light switch. “It seems easy, but it’s pretty difficult.”

In a week and a half, she said she’s learned how to cut wire, tie different knots, connect electrical systems and do electrical math — skills she plans to use at home for household repairs, as well as potentially to make a good living.

When the program wraps up July 5, Galindo and the other participants will receive half a high school credit. Most participants are incoming freshmen from throughout the Valley.

“As we looked at education in the past, the only option we were giving our students is ‘It’s four years or bust,’” YV-Tech principal Dennis Matson said of high school.

Regardless of what careers they wanted to pursue, Matson said, students were funneled through high school and into college.

“Now education is having a paradigm shift where it’s: ‘Well, let’s help students figure out what it is they may want to do, and then what path do they want to take to get there,’” Matson said. “So I think exposing students to these potential career opportunities helps them plan their education.”

After taking the summer course, students have a better feel for whether the full YV-Tech program — available to juniors and seniors from 15 high schools throughout the Yakima Valley — might be a good fit later. Matson said completing a program at YV-Tech could set students up with hands-on skills to enter the job market or start college, depending on their personal goals.

“It gives our students a competitive edge,” he said.

For Daniel Shipley, 17, who took the drones and automation course during the last school year and is certified as a drone pilot, drone-flying opens career opportunities in law enforcement, search-and-rescue or firefighting.

“We can outfit these (drones) with thermal cameras to find out where the worst parts of fires are. The Notre Dame fire, they were using drones identical to this,” he said as other students directed a drone through the air. “They just had a (thermal) camera, and that’s how they were able to find where the fire was at, at its worst, and put it out quicker than it normally would have taken. So that’s what I want to do — something similar to that.”

But Mateo Cruz, a 16-year-old entering his junior year at West Valley High School, sees different opportunities from the same course.

Two years ago, he joined the summer digital media program at YV-Tech, where he learned about the film industry, a career path he might want to pursue. By taking the drone and automation summer class, he said, he’s learning skills such as 2D and 3D design and flying that could be beneficial in filmmaking.

“When I was doing the digital media class, there was a lot of film talk about working on stuff with the cameramen,” Cruz said. “Using the drones like this one, they work really well for cinematic shots. There’s a lot of cinematic shots in movies and shows these days, so there’s a lot of job opportunities.”

Reach Janelle Retka at [email protected] or on Twitter: @janelleretka

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