Nederland Middle/ Senior High to offer outdoor career classes

Options like snow science, wilderness ethics build on mountain setting

Nederland students soon will have class options that include rock climbing, snow science, wilderness ethics and backcountry navigation.

Nederland Middle/ Senior is moving to a career and technical education model for its high school, giving students the opportunity to take classes in outdoor leadership, resource conservation and environmental science, and engineering and construction.

The school secured the required CTE class approvals and started developing classes over the summer, deciding not to delay the program as the school year started remote only. For now, teachers are focused mainly on student engagement and showing them how what they’re learning is used in industry, with plans to add in applying what they’re learning once school is back in person.

“If you’re a student and you’re thinking about a different school experience, it’s pretty awesome,” Nederland Middle/ Senior Principal Rick Elertson said. “We want to bring relevance back to the classroom. You take what you learn and apply it outside of a school.”

School leadership decided on a career and technical education focus as the best option to reverse a trend of declining enrollment and better serve students. Nederland initially had looked at an expeditionary learning program as a focus, then moved to planning a technical education focus about a year and a half ago.

One reason to offer technical education classes, Elertson said, is it’s difficult for mountain students to access the district’s existing technical education programs because they’re mainly offered on the Arapahoe campus in Boulder. Many of Nederland’s new classes also take advantage of the mountain setting, along with connecting students with area businesses for internships.

“We have an amazing place where we can connect so many of our classes to the outdoors,” Elertson said.

Nederland science teacher Daniel Wade, who is in his fourth year at the school after working in the engineering industry for 10 years, helped develop the program.

He said the work included “picking the brains” of industry contacts to see what skills and certifications students would need.

A student who wanted to work in ski patrol, for example, would need to know snow science, have avalanche training certifications and have the background to take Emergency Medical Technician community college classes, he said.

“They could go straight to careers or need to have minimal post- secondary work to get there,” he said. “It saves kids a ton of money.”

As the program is built over three years, core classes will be embedded into the technical education classes. Next school year, for example, students will take introduction to natural resource management instead of biology.

The school will continue to offer all its current Advanced Placement classes, Elertson said, and students who take advanced core classes still could take technical education core classes in the same subject area as electives — taking both AP biology and natural resource management, for example.

“Students he said.

Students also can take classes in more than one area, or pathway, or concentrate on one. Along with this school year’s resource conservation, outdoor leadership and construction pathways, Nederland plans to add computer science and business and entrepreneurship pathways in future years.

Another goal is to work with a community college to provide concurrent enrollment classes so the high school students can earn college credit.

Elertson said teachers have “grand visions” of what the program can be, including one teacher who ordered five whitewater rafts for river studies.

“They’re not bound by a traditional classroom where they stay in the classroom, teach, test and grade,” he said. “They can transform these programs into their vision of education for the kids. That’s what’s going to make them truly special.” can customize,”