Elementary, middle and high school students in Lewis County have an opportunity to get hands-on experience welding, operating a forklift, driving a bulldozer and repairing electrical systems through Centralia College’s career and technical education (CTE) mobile classroom.
A semi-truck that has been retrofitted into a classroom with a variety of simulator stations, the CTE mobile classroom is making the rounds to different schools across Lewis County introducing students to careers they could pursue in the trades.
“If you can develop a pipeline of interest in sixth, seventh and eighth graders as they go into high school or as they go into community college, there are opportunities for them … So what we’re trying to do is just give them a chance to explore and glimpse the possibilities in the various trades that are out there,” said Bill Sullivan, who, with Bob Guenther, helped facilitate the purchase of the semi-truck for the mobile classroom a few years ago.
Sullivan, Guenther and other stakeholders with an interest in Centralia College’s CTE mobile classroom, including Lewis County Commissioner Sean Swope, toured the classroom as it was parked at Chehalis Middle School on Tuesday.
Small groups of Chehalis Middle School students have been rotated through the mobile classroom since they returned from winter break in early January. The school aims to have the last group of students finish in the mobile classroom by Feb. 10, before the mobile classroom moves to Centralia Middle School and Futurus High School on March 3.
The mobile classroom was previously at Napavine Elementary School, according to Guenther.
“They get out there, they’re excited, they’re working, it’s hands-on, it’s visual. It’s the type of thing that they like to do,” said Chehalis Middle School science teacher Brice Meldrum, who has been teaching his students about different trade programs during class.
For eighth-grader Miguel Orozco, the mobile classroom has been an opportunity to learn about the trades and to envision possible career paths.
“The simulators, I personally find them really good, because when you think about it, you’re like ‘Oh, how are you going to do that?’ But once you actually get hands on into something, it’s a lot better, and you actually get to experience what you could be doing,” Orozco said.
Orozco has been thinking about entering the trades, but found it hard to determine what he’d be good at or enjoy, he said.
“When I’m thinking about like, ‘Man, being a mechanic or electrician or something seems really hard,’ but once I actually got hands-on into one of those buses, it’s like, ‘this is fun,’” Orozco said.
Sullivan and Guenther helped Centralia College acquire a semi-truck to use as a mobile classroom after Centralia College received a $1.3 million grant from TransAlta to build the Southwest Washington Flexible Training (SWFT) Center, which opened at the college in 2021.
Sullivan and Guenther were on the TransAlta Coal Transition Committee at the time.
“When talking to the vice president of the college at the time, we said, ‘you know, what we need is some portable unit that we can take out to the communities, so we put butts in seats at Centralia College at the SWFT Center,’” Guenther said Tuesday. “ … It’s taken a lot longer to get this ready to go than we thought, but here we are today, with Napavine doing the preliminary experiment with the youngsters and Chehalis Middle School doing the work with the middle school kids.”
The TransAlta Coal Transition Committee has recently donated more funding to help get the mobile classroom get out to any interested schools in Lewis County, Guenther said.
Anyone interested in arranging for the mobile classroom to make a stop at their school is encouraged to email SEI K-12 Energy and Climate Education Outreach Fellow Emily Klickman at emilyklickman@climatecorps.org.
