My name is Jessica Brown, formerly Sanabria, and I have been so excited to begin this new journey with a familiar family. CTE (Career & Technical Education) is a new position to me, but in terms of teaching this is my 5th year. I taught in EC for 4 years from 2016-2020. Two of those years were here at BMS, but due to COVID and family needs, I decided to take a break and do something else for a bit. Now that my family has grown and changed, I also needed a change in my career. When looking at teaching positions available, I came across the CTE position here at Burgaw Middle School and right away reached out to the former administration team to ask them more about the position. A good handful of teachers who were here then are still here now, and that made it feel very comfortable and welcoming when deciding to come back to BMS. I grew up in Burgaw as well so being a BMS alumni myself, it is a very "full-circle" feeling.
In the classroom, my main goal is to create an environment that will give students the opportunity to explore careers and to give them a chance to learn more than what is within these four walls. I look forward to using this CTE position to my advantage by presenting students with real-life situations. Our classroom looks very different and if you asked them they would probably tell you the same. With the lack of Internet access in our building, it has been a challenge. However, we have learned to teach and learn in other ways by using team challenges and races to work on transitional skills such as communication, working with stress, and simply the idea of working with a team vs independently. We are blessed to have multiple STEM options and programs, but we have recently begun a brand new one which will have multiple labs and stations for them to work in that are career driven.
These exciting new career readiness labs consist of Cosmetology/Barbering, Personal Finance, Home Maintenance Systems, Digital Audio and Video Production, Robotics, Mental Health, Criminalistics, and Employability Skills. I can not WAIT to see what they do in this program and look forward to seeing them grow in their individual ways. All I hope for students to gain from this class is to learn more about themselves - what they like, don't like, what they are good at, not good at, and how to turn something they love into maybe something they do as a career in the long run. I want them to know that they have endless choices and options to choose from and if they truly want something to work for it, but also that the career needs to be a good fit for them. Everyone has their own skills and they should build on those as well as be open to learning new ones.