Letter from the Superintendent
Support for Careers
Launch the media gallery 1 playerParents,
We at Treynor CSD realize that you have school choice and we are very appreciative of the fact that you choose to send your children to our district. We also realize that for some families there are many factors that go into such a decision. My hope is that after reading this letter your decision is reaffirmed by the work our staff is doing to help your child prepare for life after Treynor CSD and their preparation for their future career.
School districts in Iowa are required to have a District Career and Academic Plan (DCAP). This plan is a roadmap of sorts to help students with their own individual career and academic plans. Our High School Counselor, Mrs. Danie Floerchinger; Career Coach, Mrs. Jenny Berens; and MS/HS Principal, Mr. Rick Nickerson, have been working hard to ensure that our students have the support and opportunities necessary so that each student has multiple pathways to a successful career. To accomplish this goal we know that our students will need an array of experiences that include interest inventories; investigation into various career fields, clusters and pathways; career exploration experiences through hands-on trade exploration, job site visits, and job shadowing; high school course selection specific to career plans; college and post-secondary education exploration and experiences; opportunities to earn industry credentials; senior-year internships; and so much more.
To assist students in their investigation of careers we start in middle school with the usage of Kuder Navigator in which students complete assessments that help identify courses and careers that align with their skills and interests. If you have a child in grade 8-11, please ask them to open up the application on their Chromebook and show you what they have investigated for careers. To bring this to life we have Treynor Career Days in which speakers from the various career clusters come to school and talk with the students about their career, needed training, and what the job is like. Additionally, there are career expos, IWCC Career Discovery Days, small group job site visits, and job shadows. One example would be The Iowa Skilled Trade Exploration in Des Moines, which provides our students with opportunities to learn about careers in welding, brick laying, architecture, electrician, lineman, heavy equipment operator, drywall, steam and pipefitting, and construction. Career Discovery Days, site visits, and job shadows have included aviation, engineering, maintenance technician, distribution, metal fabrication, robotics, commercial and residential electrician, mental health, law enforcement, dentistry, physical therapist, nursing, surgeon, radiologist, education, mechanic, attorney, veterinarian, information technology, cosmetology, agriculture, and the list goes on and on.
All of these careers require additional education beyond high school. Iowa Western Community College offers a variety of academy programs that our students enroll in and our district pays for. Through those programs, students can start on the training now and earn industry credentials while still in school. In fact, we have had students earn credentials for Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), Food Safety Training (ServSafe), Welding certifications, Plumbing Technology Diploma, Diesel Mechanics Diploma, Precision Measurement & Hand Tool Identification & Safety certifications, and OSHA certification. To help students think about these and other opportunities we have through our partnership with IWCC, we have expanded our students’ exposure to colleges. Our 8th graders recently visited IWCC; our 9th graders visited Northwest Missouri State University; 10th graders visited Nebraska Wesleyan University, and 11th graders visited the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Many of our high school students take general education and/or program-specific courses that transfer well to most 4-year colleges (e.g. Intro to Sociology, Composition I and II, Medical Terminology, Statistics, Western Civilization, Intro to Ethics, etc.).
Monitoring the impact of these experiences and opportunities is essential for our evaluation of our work. One indicator of this work is college credits earned while in high school. Take for example the Class of 2024 that earned the following:
- 98% earned one or more credits
- 89% earned 12 or more credits (*equivalent to a semester’s worth of college credits)
- 66% earned 24 or more credits
- 13% earned 36 or more credits
I realize this is very long, but this only begins to scratch the surface of the opportunities for our students to explore and achieve their career goals while still in school at Treynor CSD.
Perhaps you have heard that when you choose a small school you just don’t have the same opportunities as a large school. Hopefully, this letter will provide you with some insight into the work we are doing to prepare your child for their career, and why we like to think of our district as a “small school with unlimited opportunities”.
Thank you for your support and thank you for choosing Treynor CSD to educate your child.
Roll Cards!
Dr. Joel Beyenhof
Superintendent