Feature Story

Career and Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs) give high school students experience-rich, real-world opportunities to apply the skills they learn in their career and technical education (CTE) classrooms.  

As a first-year industrial arts teacher for the 2025-26 school year, Josie Gage wanted to know what areas of her job she needed to make a priority. She also wanted to know what factors her fellow Kansas career and technical education (CTE) colleagues believe lead to the greatest job satisfaction. 

On this month’s episode of the KSDE Insight Podcast, Kansas Education Commissioner Dr. Randy Watson talks with education leaders about how Career and Technical Education (CTE) helps students prepare for life after high school. 

Liz Anstine believes a child’s passions for what they may want to pursue later as a career should be fostered by Career and Technical Education (CTE) principles all along the continuum of a student’s education. 

“Maybe in third grade, you wanted to be a firefighter, maybe in fourth grade you wanted to paint nails, maybe in fifth grade, all of a sudden, you're interested in feeding the homeless because you did that as a project,” said Anstine, the 2025 Kansas Teacher of the Year. “So now we want to help drive that (passion) for them and help them make sure that they're keeping that purposeful curiosity. I'm so big on that because it's going to make their story bigger because they've kind of learned about all of these things along the way.” 

Two Kansas chapters of the Future Farmers of America (FFA) are proving the organization teaches high school students more than just farming and agriculture.  

This year’s FFA officers at Riverton High School, Riverton USD 404, met for a leadership retreat in late summer to begin planning their activities for the 2024-25 school year. That’s when the concept for the “Ag for All Ages” program took root.