Sweet Home High School agricultural sciences teacher Scott Jacobson is teaching a full room of students on a Friday morning, giving them instructions on a project.
In the room is another adult, an aide who is assisting a student who is disabled.
That student is just one of many in Sweet Home who have disabilities, but who have had the opportunity to take “hands-on” career and technical education (CTE) classes in which many of them thrive.
Sweet Home has been a ground-breaker in the state in its approach to helping students who are on IEPs – individualized education programs, which provide specialized instruction and support services for elementary and secondary students with learning or other disabilities.
Sweet Home has a lot of IEP students.
Approximately 20% of Sweet Home’s students are on IEPs, said Sweet Home High School Principal Ralph Brown, “which, I think, puts us at the highest level for a district our size in the state.”
According to Brian Brands, director of Student Services for the district, Sweet Home has roughly 415 students on IEPs, out of a total enrollment of some 2,300.
Students at Sweet Home who are on IEPs vary widely in their abilities. Skills taught can range from learning life skills, such as how to do daily chores at home, budgeting, cooking and running the school’s Cookie House fundraiser, to much more technical enterprises.
In January, Brown and Brands reported to School Board members on the progress the district has made in serving IEP students through its CTE programs at Sweet Home High School.
Expanding CTE Offerings
CTE at the high school includes agriculture science, manufacturing, forestry and what is known as agriculture construction.
All of the programs focus heavily on hands-on skills and knowledge.
Agriculture science trains students in soil, plant and animal science, parliamentary procedure and supervised agricultural experience programs.
The manufacturing curriculum includes classes in vocabulary, measurements, metals and welding.
Forestry courses include forest management and land use principles, tree identification and other skills necessary for work in the timber industry.
Agriculture construction adds carpentry, tool recognition and skills, measuring and other basic construction skills to basic agricultural training.
Safety training is a big part of all of the programs.
A major goal of the CTE programs, Brown said, is to prepare students for “living wage jobs,” or to “polish their skills” at the community college level.
“If a kid has a good, basic understanding and a good foundation in welding, they may be able to hook up with a local business and be able to use that skill,” he said. “So when we’re looking at living-wage jobs, that’s just a very powerful component of CTE.”
Robyn Lindsey is Sweet Home’s Pre-Employment Transition specialist, a new position created this year – not only in Sweet Home, but in the state, administrators said.
Lindsey works with students who have difficulties with or experience anxiety when they need to communicate. But she also works with IED students and meets regularly with other vocational rehabilitation professionals
Brown said he gets the sense that other districts are reluctant to have IEP students involved in CTE classes due to safety concerns.
He said Sweet Home administrators responded to that challenge by giving CTE teachers an instructional assistant to help students specifically in those classes.
“It’s not special education assistance, per se,” he noted. “It’s a CTE assistant.
“What we’ve found is that they can help a variety of students, but it is also an extra set of eyes to assist some of our students who are on IEPs when we’re doing various activities.”
Another advantage of having the CTE assistant position, which is provisional this year, he said, is that it gives teachers more flexibility in handling their classes.
“There are times when a teacher might want to take half the kids outside while working on something outside, and half the kids are working on something in the classroom. So we have that extra person to keep an eye on the kids, so we don’t have the students unsupervised.”
“There’s always a liability,” Brands said. “Kids are going to be operating a chainsaw. I think we staff appropriately to make sure kids are safe.
Another benefit, he said, is an increased graduation rate among students who struggle with the three R’s.
“A lot of it is just that sense of accomplishment, being able to have a skill, to be able to do something that they can achieve highly at. So there are a lot of positives with it.
Incentive for Students
Brown and Brands say CTE classes increase students’ interest in completing high school, and state data appears to bear that out.
The Oregon Education Department reported in late January that in Sweet Home, CTE participants – students who have completed at least a half credit of CTE coursework, had a 94.6% graduation rate. CTE concentrators – those who earned one or more credits in technical skill-based courses, had a graduation rate of above 95%.
“Every one of these stories are real people,” Brands said.
Sweet Home has gained such a reputation for its facility in working with struggling students to the point that, Brown said, he’s aware of families who have actually moved into the district for that reason.
“If they have the opportunity to come to a district that serves the students better, I think people sometimes do that.”
Sweet Home has made concerted efforts to engage students with learning disabilities in training and activities that will help them be successful after high school, Brown and Brands said. Those include a health sciences class taught by Michelle Snyder and a math class taught by Steve Thorpe.
Brown said the high school has progressed from “the old days,” when CTE classes consisted of “woods and small engines.”
“Since then we’ve had forestry and natural resources and wildlife, and agriculture.”
The latter, which began in 2022 with the hiring of Jacobson to teach agriculture classes and lead a Future Farmers of America program, has since branched out to include an agricultural structures component, in which students learn to combine agriculture and construction skills, starting with small projects like chicken coops and moving on to bigger and better things.
“These programs, they’re hands-on and I think that appeals to a lot of our students,” Brown said. “If they’re a student that struggles with reading or math or writing, those classes may be difficult for them and maybe not a lot of fun, you know?
“So having the outlet of one of the more hands-on programs, the student can thrive on that because you know, they might be a good welder. You might have to read a diagram to see what you’re welding, but it’s not like the typical heavy-duty reading, the stereotypical sort of school thing.
“And so the kids are able to get in there and, I think a lot of times, it’s a relief from the hardcore core classes that a student may have – English, math, science, social studies.”
Goal: ‘Living-Wage Jobs”
A major goal of the CTE programs, Brown said, is to prepare students for “living-wage jobs,” or to “polish their skills” at the community college level.
gives students instructions during a class.
“If a kid has a good, basic understanding and a good foundation in welding, they may be able to hook up with a local business and be able to use that skill,” he said. “So when we’re looking at living wage jobs, that’s just a very powerful component of CTE.”
Brown said he gets the sense that other districts are reluctant to have IEP students involved in CTE classes due to safety concerns.
He said Sweet Home administrators responded to requests by CTE teachers this year by hiring an instructional assistant to help students in those classes.
“It’s not special education assistance, per se,” he noted. “It’s a CTE assistant. What we’ve found is that they can help a variety of students, but it is also an extra set of eyes to assist some of our students who are on IEPs when we’re doing various activities.”
Another advantage of having the CTE assistant position, which is provisional this year, he said, is that it gives teachers more flexibility in handling their classes.
“There are times when a teacher might want to take half the kids outside while working on something outside, and half the kids are working on something in the classroom. So we have that extra person to keep an eye on the kids, so we don’t have the students unsupervised.”
“There’s always a liability,” Brands said. “Kids are going to be operating a chainsaw. I think we staff appropriately to make sure kids are safe.
CTE programs have gained traction in Oregon schools in recent years. A 2020 study of Oregon’s CTE offerings conducted by the Regional Educational Laboratory Northwest, which examined high school CTE programs and results between 2007 and 2018, found that the number of secondary CTE programs had increased since 2015, with the steepest increase in urban schools, and that public high schools offered, on average, three CTE programs by the 2017-18 school year.
Success Turning Heads
Lindsey and the administrators said that Sweet Home’s efforts have drawn attention from Oregon educational officials.
Recently, at a monthly statewide meeting with fellow vocational rehab and transition specialists, she said, others were amazed when she mentioned that all of her 10th- through 12th-graders in life skills classes have food handler’s cards.
“We put together a study program, moved at a pace that served our students, and they were all able to take the test and pass,” Lindsey said.
During a visit by ODE officials just before Christmas, the visitors asked about the district’s CTE programs and its efforts on behalf of life-skills students.
“I let them know how great it is and (life skills and IED students) are a part of everything. I was told that is not how a lot of districts do things.”
What got the OED’s attention in particular were the welding and construction and agriculture offerings being made available to those students, Brown said.
“They reached out to Brian and said one of the things they liked, that they’d heard about from folks they had talked with, was our inclusion in our CTE programs of kids with special needs, kids with IEPs.
Programs Provide Opportunity
Lindsey said she conducted an exercise earlier this year in which students were encouraged to decide what their goals are in life.
“Turns out one of our students, who primarily eats hot dogs every day, really wants to be a chef, another student wants to be a photographer and one wants to get a food cart and travel with it.
“One student, in particular, wants to open a dog-walking business. He has talked about this for several years and has put together a business plan.”
Another, she said, did well in small engines classes and is in the process of starting his own yard care business.
Lindsey said Sweet Home plans to host a “CTE Event” on May 8 that will bring in other schools’ life skills students. Those who need partners but do not have one will be provided partners from Sweet Home’s general education students, she said.
Students will have the chance to weld, build, climb, make their own shirt through screen printing where they can make their own shirt, and learn about showing Future Farmers of America animals and planting flowers, she said.
“Our CTE instructors are phenomenal. It sounds so cliche to say this, but they truly look at each student’s ability and not disability,” Lindsey said.