• Career Development
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    Our Career and Technical Education (CTE) program aims to prepare students for employment opportunities, advanced education and productive lives. CTE promotes best practices that enhance teachers' efforts to improve student achievement and encourage responsible career choices. We want to meet students' needs, cultivate their abilities and help them realize their aspirations.

    Middle school students are offered exploratory courses in business and information technologies, life skills, technology systems and career decisions. Each middle school has a Career Development Coordinator to support the school-to-career connection and facilitate business alliance activities.

Contact Us

Laura Simmons
lesimmons@wcpss.net

  • Career Development Coordinator

    Laura Simmons

    My first career was engineering, and I spent 20 years performing helicopter research at NASA Ames Research Center in California and analyzing causes of helicopter accidents with the American Helicopter Society. I then taught for 7 years to share my love of science, engineering and art with the ever-impressionable middle schoolers, so they can solve the world’s problems.  Now I am the career development coordinator and provide opportunities for students to learn about a wide variety of careers, as a good career-fit is an important ingredient in life-long wellbeing.  Outside school, I am addicted to gardening, and enjoy nature, traveling, photography and being creative and having fun with my daughter and our 3 cats.