Courtesy Photo Alpena High School students, who are a part of the Engineering and Robotics Technology Program at the school, are seen in this photo taken on Nov. 8, 2023. The Engineering and Robotics Technology Program was incorporated into the Career and Technology Program after attending conferences like the Michigan Career Education Conference.

ALPENA — Teachers, counselors, and administrators at Alpena High School are looking to pick up new courses, standards, and strategies for Alpena Public School’s Career and Technology Education program as they prepare to head to Grand Rapids for the Michigan Career Education Conference.

“We are taking some teachers, a counselor, and myself,” said Joyce McCoy, the CTE director at APS. “It’s a chance for us to meet with other program teachers and teach exactly what my teachers teach.”

The MICEC is an annual conference taking place today and tomorrow that will host 120 speakers from CTE programs who will speak to over 800 attendees in different sessions that go over a variety of new practices, rules, and guidelines at every level of the CTE program. APS is hoping to integrate what they learn from other CTE programs into their schools, according to McCoy.

“Teachers get to learn about what’s going on around in the state at their own program areas,” said McCoy. “As an administrator, I get guidance on new rules and legislation on spending money building programs, and our counselors get to find out ways that we can make sure that our students get encouraged, tactical aid, education, and they choose what’s good for their career ahead. It’s a little bit of everything.”

According to McCoy, several teachers will be looking at attending sessions on emerging programs that could be incorporated into the CTE program at the APS.

“We are always looking at emerging programs to see if there’s something that’s needed here in Alpena,” said McCoy. “We go to sessions where new programs are presented and what might be needed to do them, and whether they meet our regional needs.”

McCoy cites the Engineering Robotics Technology program as a major program added to CTE at APS after attending conferences like the MICEC.

“I think the biggest addition due to these conferences would be our Engineering and Robotics Technology Program,” said McCoy. “We attended these kinds of workshops for a year or two, we checked out our community to see if it was needed, and then we worked with other school districts that we saw at these conferences, to help us with what to buy, what we needed, and what we did to prepare our teacher for.”