Fraser Public Schools always emphasizes and promotes the importance and benefits of having career-ready and proactive students. At the beginning of November, there were district-wide staff meetings and speakers that largely focused on this topic. FPS staff went to Fraser High School and explored all the different options that the high school students have in order to prepare themselves for their future careers.

Accompanied by a panel of speakers, Fraser Superintendent Dr. Carrie Wozniak, Director of Career and Technical Education Mr. Brent Brasure, and former Governor Rick Snyder presented about the importance of the future and the journey to the future that Fraser students are on.

“Your presence here today reminds us that we are all part of a much larger community that believes deeply in the schools and in the potential of every child. We just adopted a new strategic plan here in Fraser, and it gives us a clear and powerful roadmap for the next five years,” Wozniak said to the Fraser staff.

She further explained these goals to be centered around academic achievement, safety and security, mental health, and Fraser’s exceptional staff.

“These goals and this vision just don’t live on our website…they live in our teachers designing lessons that meet their students where they are, and they support staff who come out every day and greet our students with a smile every morning. It’s in our counselors, our coaches who help our students find their confidence and their path. So, our strategic plan isn’t just something that we do, it’s who we are,” she said.

This Fraser plan lends itself nicely to getting Fraser students ready to take on their futures. At Fraser High School, there are 17 Career Technical Education (CTE) programs that help students get hands-on experience in their chosen field.

“When you teach a student to read, design, weld, or problem solve, you’re really fueling our community’s future workplace,” Wozniak said. These CTE pathways prepare students for their futures.

With all the different directions that are available, Fraser is trying to “help all students with all callings be able to see validity and relevance in the calling that they have,” Brasure said.

During his talk, Brasure credited the people behind the opportunities. “All of this was brought to us by the career pathway law in 1920 that required this grade appropriate career development instruction for all of our learners. And this could not have happened if we were not awarded the Marshall Plan, which is part of a special thank you I’d like to give to Governor Snyder and Roger Curtis,” Brasure said.

Former Governor Snyder was present to accept this gratitude. He spoke on how important it is to continue the work that Fraser is doing.

“One thing I ask you to be today is an ambassador. I want you to be an ambassador for Fraser Schools. I also want you to be an ambassador for student-centered competency-based learning. That’s the world we’re going to. That’s the world we can embrace. And that’s an exciting place. And the only way that happens is we mix things up a lot more. Instead of having that isolated world of education, that isolated world of employers, we’ve got to blend it together,” he told the FPS staff.

“We can learn from others, we can build others, we can be more proactive, we can be more aggressive about creating opportunities with competency-based certificates, things you’ll carry throughout your whole life,” Snyder said.

While Snyder spoke positively about the work that Fraser is doing, some of the teachers didn’t approve of him being there. During his term, he negatively changed the pension plan for new teachers. They didn’t like that he was talking up the future that Fraser was building for their students, while he wasn’t too keen on building a future for teachers during his governorship, they believed.

Despite these opinions, the message of the day was still overall positive. The speakers emphasized the good work that Fraser is doing and will continue to do.

“We don’t wait for opportunity around here. We envision it and we build it. This is what it means to live our vision. We are preparing students for success in their lives, in their careers, and in their communities,” Wozniak said.