The Socorro Independent School District Career and Technical Education department received a 2019-2020 Summer Career and Technical Education Grant from the Texas Education Agency, which allowed the district to provide bridge camps for incoming students to the SISD Advanced Academic Academies. 

The camps gave incoming freshmen a week’s worth of activities, projects and interaction with high school teachers and students in their prospective programs to prepare for the upcoming school year.

The SISD CTE department is one of some 70 applicants in the state and six in the region to have received the grant.

The grant funds helped with supplies and equipment for students and will help seniors who have met the necessary requirements to take classes at El Paso Community College this summer.

The CTE department created packets with information and supplies to distribute to students to use from home while attending the virtual bridge camps.

“We made sure students didn’t have any challenges not to be successful and helped them participate in the camps,” said SISD CTE director George Thomas. “Students who were interested had full opportunity to participate.”

Thomas said the best outcome from the camps always is the interaction between the incoming freshman and upcoming seniors who assist teachers at the camps.

“Despite the circumstances, with students working virtually, we developed activities and ways to access small group environments where they could work together to plan and create,” he said. “This was an opportunity for the kids to practice working together virtually.”

By attending the camp, students get to experience what the instruction and interaction in the academies they are joining will be like over the next four years.

“The camps were very successful with the students showing a lot of excitement for the upcoming school year,” Thomas said.

 Published June 25, 2020

Strategic Direction: College and Career Readiness