MOULTRIE, Ga. — “Most of Colquitt County High School’s students are not going to college,” Tim Hobbs said. It’s his job as the school’s CTAE director to make sure they’re ready for their other options after graduation.

CTAE is Career, Technical and Agricultural Education. These are the classes that help prepare students for a job right after graduation or for continued training at a technical college. They cover a wide range: agriculture, healthcare, construction, Junior ROTC and more.

February is CTAE Month, and Hobbs was happy to talk last week about the work CCHS does in his program.

“Colquitt County is full of jobs,” he said. “Good paying jobs with good benefits.”

The key is to have students with the training to fill those needs. The CTAE program stays in contact with local businesses to know what kinds of skills they need and it tweaks its offerings to help students get ready for those jobs.

CCHS’s CTAE program offers 36 pathways of study in nine clusters. Other schools across the state offer different pathways based on their local industries’ needs.

A pathway is a series of three related classes that give a student a solid knowledge of a specific subject. Each high school student must choose a pathway to graduate, although not all pathways are in the CTAE fields. Some students may choose from fine arts or college preparatory pathways instead. 

Hobbs, who’s in his seventh year as CTAE director, said the CTAE pathways are designed with two things in mind: The careers are in high demand, especially locally, and they draw high wages.

“We want our kids to be successful when they get in a career,” he said.

CCHS students are responding to that. Currently, 1,394 students are taking one or more CTAE classes — that’s 82% of the student body.

Each program in CTAE has a student organization — such as FFA for agriculture students or HOSA for health-care students — through which the students compete outside of the classroom. Hobbs said the students learn leadership through those clubs, and the competitions let them meet people throughout the industries they’re training to go into. He said often those companies offer jobs after graduation to students who placed among the top in their competitions.

Many of those businesses also come into the school to offer seminars to the students.

“That connection with our kids is vital,” Hobbs said.

Each program also has its own advisory panel made up of volunteers drawn from relevant industries as well as educators, students and the public. These panels meet at least twice a year to oversee curriculum, the classroom and supplies, and they offer recommendations to the teachers about ways to improve.

“We try to get people who are really involved in our programs so we can make them better,” Hobbs said.

Sometimes industry changes faster than education, so these advisory panels help each of the programs stay up-to-date with what skills the businesses actually need.

The connection with local industries is baked into the CTAE program’s design. Hobbs is in the middle of completing the Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment, a document that describes what skills local businesses are looking for. That assessment helps determine how much federal funding the program receives.

In response to local industries, the Colquitt County School System created an engineering class at C.A. Gray Junior High School, Hobbs said. Two years ago the class expanded up into the high school, and it’s continued to grow. Most of what the students work on is computer coding using Computer Assisted Design. A grant purchased a 3-D printer, and students now use CAD to design parts and the printer to create them.

That class, like many CTAE programs, take what students learn in their science and math classes and apply them to the real world.

“When you talk about science or math, it’s not as fun in a math class as in welding,” said Hobbs, who taught welding for 17 years before becoming CTAE director.

Other CTAE programs started at Colquitt County High then expanded down to C.A. Gray, including the recent growth of the automotive program.

“We’re the only one in the state doing middle school automotive,” Hobbs said.

The automotive program exemplifies both the industry connection and the path to a career that are hallmarks of the CTAE program, Hobbs said. Robert Hutson’s car dealership is a big supporter of the automotive program. Four CCHS students came back during the summer to train for Ford Certification at the dealership, and two of them now work there after graduation. A third has gone on to similar training with John Deere, Hobbs said.

Similarly, the high school’s medical assisting program was inspired by Colquitt Regional Medical Center, which offers internships to students in that pathway.

“We had an overwhelming number of students wanting to get in there,” Hobbs said.

All of the CTAE pathways end with an assessment. Some assessments carry more weight than others. For example, the welding assessment is established by the American Welding Society, a nationally recognized organization. A welder who passes that assessment isn’t guaranteed a job or that they won’t need further training, but the AWS certification assures the hiring manager that the student has a firm understanding of the basics, Hobbs said.

Some pathway assessments, though, provide state certification that will be required for a graduate to get a job in the field. Medical assisting is one of those, and so is food service.

But possibly the biggest CTAE program is agriculture. It reaches all the way down to the elementary level at Hamilton and Odom elementary schools, and other elementary schools touch on agricultural issues through their science classes. Children — from young kids to high schoolers — show animals with the 4-H Club and FFA, and these activities become family affairs.

“Teaching welding, I did the best I could for my kids,” Hobbs said, “but in agriculture it’s not just the teacher. It’s the mama, it’s the daddy, the brothers and sisters, the uncles and aunts and grandmama. Everybody’s involved.”

And beyond the family, ag students find themselves supported by the whole community as well as with resources from local, state and federal agencies.