Just five minutes away from Lexington High School is Lexington’s only other public high school: Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical High School, a regional high school, serving Lexington and eight other nearby towns. Four and a half years after graduating from Minuteman myself, I went back to see what drew the current student body there.
Student Ella Wilds offered to give me a tour of the school. The first three years of my high school career took place in Minuteman’s original building, which was replaced by a new campus that opened in the fall of 2019—mere months before in-person learning shut down temporarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic—so a lot had changed since I was a student.
Wilds is a senior in Early Education and Teaching, one of 19 Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs offered at Minuteman. Every student eventually chooses a CTE program and, over the course of three and a half years, alternates weekly between their CTE program—also referred to as their vocation or their “shop”—and academic classes. For the first half of their freshman year, students spend their shop weeks doing Exploratory, in which they choose the eight programs that interest them the most and spend a week in each.
An excited Wilds showed me Early Education’s location, tucked away in a sunny corner of the building. In addition to their classroom space, Early Education also hosts an adult-run on-site daycare program, where students get real-life experience working with children starting in their freshmen year. Wilds believes this experience has helped her prepare for her future as an educator.
“It’s helped me get a feel of having a major in college, and it’s helped me decide what I want to do,” she said.
While CTE programs are unique to vocational schools like Minuteman, the school still places emphasis on its academic programs. Minuteman’s academics are aligned with state standards, and operate on four levels: Advanced Placement (AP), honors, College Prep I, and College Prep II. Classes include english, math, science, social science, languages, physical education, music, and art.
Students are also given opportunities to use the skills they’ve acquired in their CTE programs in the classroom.
“The fact that we can apply shop work to the classroom is definitely different,” said Eric Marshall, who teaches physics at Minuteman. This road goes both ways; when Marshall needs something—for example, a 30-foot pipe that can launch a ball across the room—for a demonstration, the students in Advanced Manufacturing are always excited to take up the project for him.
In addition to traditional learning and hands-on experience, Minuteman students also graduate with a plethora of trade-specific certifications. Dean Musto, a senior in Health Assisting, is grateful for this experience.
“I get to do a lot of things I wouldn’t get to do otherwise, let alone get certified in,” said Musto. He is certified in OSHA, ServeSafe, and Person-Centered Dementia Care, and is a registered Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA).
Musto, who is passionate about crash education, also helped restart Minuteman’s mock crash program. The school worked with the local police and fire departments, as well as LexMedia, to film a mock drunk-driving accident, in which Musto played the role of the crash victim. Musto also works at Emerson Urgent Care in conjunction with his education.
Minuteman students have the opportunity in their junior and senior years to work in a co-op position during the hours they would be in their CTE program for an even more hands-on experience.
While such certifications and experience allow some students to enter the workforce immediately after high school graduation, some choose to go onto higher education. Lyra Prestbo, Minuteman Class of 2024, is currently a freshman at Curry College. Prestbo was in Health Assisting and now majors in nursing.
“I knew I wanted to be in health in some form, and this really helped me, instead of starting from scratch,” said Prestbo. “It’s nice to have some prior knowledge.”
Even if a student ends up in a different career field from their CTE program, the skills they learn can still benefit them down the road. This was the case for Tristin O’Conner, a Minuteman alumnus who currently teaches Engineering, one of the CTE programs, at Minuteman.
O’Conner was a student in Environmental Science, and realized that she was most interested in biomimicry, where engineering mirrors the environment. This career shift eventually brought her back to Minuteman, where she gets to see her students come up with solutions to real problems.
“Every day we’re doing something entirely different,” said O’Conner on the topic of Exploratory. “Every two weeks you get a different group of kids, and they all handle the problems differently.”
As we walked, Wilds cheerfully greeted a student or teacher at almost every turn. “Everyone knows each other,” she told me.
Prior to starting at Minuteman, Wilds was nervous about the transition and being able to stay close with her friends who went to Lexington High School. Not only did she stay close to her old friends, but she made new ones at Minuteman. “I found my people here,” she explained.
Part of what makes Minuteman so interconnected is the fact that the shops can take advantage of each others’ skill sets. Students from Design and Visual Communications (DVC) illustrate children’s books written by the students in Early Education. Engineering and Robotics often learn material together due to overlap in their curriculums.
“If you’re in engineering and you need advice from carpentry, you can just walk down there and ask,” O’Conner noted.
It’s not only Early Education that Wilds is passionate about. She’s also a student ambassador, visiting middle schools to talk about Minuteman and giving tours of the building to prospective students. She was the former captain of both the volleyball and softball teams, two of Minuteman’s 14 offered sports.
I ended my tour by visiting what had been my “home away from home” during my high school years, the Design and Visual Communications (DVC) department.
Even in the short amount of time I was there, I could see the program had evolved. The students were designing mugs, something I never did as a student. Allison Barry, who teaches DVC to freshmen and seniors, explained that the mugs were part of a new initiative to integrate product design into the program. These students were in their very last week of Exploratory and recently back from winter break, but they didn’t appear burnt out or distracted. Students were asking questions every minute, showing each other how to use Adobe Illustrator, and passing out mug designs to each other. Even as freshmen, the students were collaborative and involved.
As a fellow Minuteman alumni, O’Conner seemed to share my sentiment. She recalled one instance in which a student came into Exploratory knowing nothing about Engineering.
“I got to explain it to him, and I saw it just click in his eyes,” said O’Conner.
To some students, an education model that involves passionate, hands-on experience, like the one Wilds and Musto are getting, could be invaluable.