Shifts in culture and technology have placed new expectations on students. With more educational options, hands-on opportunities and focus on learning outside of the classroom, students and teachers in today’s quickly changing world have different challenges to contend with.

Schools in Butler County are trying to keep up with the curve, implementing new technology, fostering social-emotional intelligence and preparing students for careers outside of the classroom.

Tracy Vitale, superintendent of Seneca Valley School District, said she has witnessed a shift in thinking from the start of her time working in education to now.

Thirty years ago, she said, many parents felt that in order for their children to be successful, their best option after high school was to attend college. Schools followed suit, she said, putting nearly all their focus on college preparatory programs.

The pendulum has now swung in the other direction to value skill-based, vocational programs.

“In Western Pa., a lot of people were steel workers, coal miners,” Vitale said. “When you have these blue-collar-roots parents, they want their children to have a better career than they did.”

Vitale described herself as a product of blue-collar parents: Her father was a coal miner, she said, her mother, a factory worker.

“Our parents thought, ‘My child will go to college and make more money than I did,’” she said. “That’s not always true.”

“Schools are microcosms of their community,” Vitale said. “While we might lead a lot of innovative change, and we see things coming before legislators and parents, sometimes they’re not ready for that discussion.”

In the last 15 years, Seneca Valley has attempted to stay ahead of the curve and promote its vocational programs, she said.

“Teachers are not the only experts anymore, and kids know that,” she said. “We need community partnerships, job shadowing, mentorships, internships — we’ve learned a lot about having community and business partnerships.”

She said superintendents in Butler County meet regularly to discuss ways to promote and collaborate on their vocational programs. Seven area school districts in the county contribute to Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School.

“They’re all our kids,” Vitale said.

The shift to skill-based learning became most visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, Vitale said. Some people were dissatisfied with recorded lectures, she said, and some were asking themselves if going $30,000 to $60,000 in debt for a career they were not sure of was worth it.

The answer was not to devalue higher education, Vitale said, but to offer more options.

“When we allow children to have agency in their learning, they go above and beyond,” Vitale said.

The district offers over 80 advanced placement courses for students to gain college credit, she said, and another trend in the district has shown that students are choosing to take more college credits in high school. At the same time, Vitale said she is glad there is no longer a stigma associated with attending a vocational program.

“It was always dangerous to pigeonhole kids,” Vitale said. “School should not be a silo.”

Moving forward, Vitale said she wants to see more women represented in the district’s skill-based course offerings and vocational programs. The district’s welding program started 15 years ago, she said. Today, more female students are enrolled than ever before.

“How do we prepare kids for the future? How do we prepare students to be successful in any career path they choose?” she said. “That’s our bigger goal now.”

Bria Koch, technology facilitator for the Seneca Valley Academy of Choice, also touched on the importance of personalized learning. The district’s cyber program started in 2007, she said, and offers hybrid and cyber options. Seneca Valley works with over 60 other school districts to help with their cyber programs.

“It’s such a unique opportunity,” Koch said. “Some do it for enrichment, some for remediation. We have a lot of students who are not thriving in traditional settings due to anxiety or other things, we have students who have illnesses, students who are very competitive with gymnastics or hockey … (our program) offers a unique way to reach all students.”

Koch said the cyber program offers “something for everyone.”

Students are also able to take cyber classes asynchronously that aren’t available in-person, such as Mandarin and criminology, Koch said.

When it comes to technology education, Koch said Seneca Valley students are able to explore experiences they otherwise wouldn’t have in purely traditional settings, she said.

At Seneca Intermediate High School, students can take classes in design animation, 3D modeling, motion capture and game design through the district’s cyber program.

“Students can put on the suit with (motion capture markers), like you would see in Hollywood and make an animation based on their body,” Koch said.

She said the technology education courses have encouraged students to pursue computer programming, design and animation after graduating.

Several students were admitted to a design school known for working directly with Disney and Pixar, Koch said.

“Students are exposed to different things and learn what they’re good at and shine at,” Koch said. “(The program) can give them an amazing career or an amazing hobby … we want them thriving after they leave us.”

In early 2024, Koch said the cyber program plans to implement a virtual reality classroom.

“We are in the process of working with (Carnegie Mellon University),” she said. “We had an initial meeting with them in April. We have all the equipment. We’re just working on final touches.”

The cyber program is also working on getting a golf simulator for its physical education offerings, Koch said.

Within the Butler Area School District, a new program integrating science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM, will be rolling out this year for students in kindergarten through fourth grade.

“Project Lead the Way uses a problem-based approach to teach kids how to use STEAM,” said Christina Kelly, library and STEAM educator at Connoquenessing Elementary School. “The whole thing’s based on hands-on problem solving.”

Brian White, superintendent of Butler Area School District, said Project Lead the Way was made possible through a variety of grants from the Arconic Foundation and Bayer Foundation.

Elementary school students will be working with technology by learning how to code algorithms, creating digital stories, games and animation, Kelly said.

“We’ll start by getting the kids comfortable with using the technology, and then once they’re good at the technology, then teaching them to use it creatively.”

Kelly said she is excited to see her students become engaged in the classwork and take ownership of their learning.

“With science and technology evolving so quickly, students need to practice communication and problem-solving skills to become successful,” Kelly said. “We used to ask them to repeat what they learned; now we teach them to use knowledge and design things.”

“They need to be prepared in a new way when they leave school,” Kelly said.

Changes in education should mirror rapidly changing technology, Kelly said.

“We have to try to prepare students for careers that didn’t exist when we were in school,” she said.

Kelly said trying to foresee the future in that way can be difficult.

“It’s really hard to stay fresh and current in a world that changes by the end of each day,” Kelly said.

Seneca Valley’s superintendent echoed similar statements when discussing present-day challenges for educators and administrators.

“It has become very challenging to keep up,” Vitale said. “The way we learn is not the way students learn today.”

“Staying fresh,” as Kelly put it, takes additional training time and new resources. The challenge is compounded by the teacher shortage nationwide.

In the meantime, many teachers wear multiple hats, Kelly said.

“I teach library, we’re trying to teach literacy, but also digital citizenship and staying safe online,” Kelly said. Kelly also teaches STEAM.

Keeping up with expenses around technology has also been difficult.

“We’re constantly upgrading hardware, making sure systems don’t go down,” Vitale said. “A lot of that costs a lot of money. We’re always trying to replenish our technology and educate teachers through professional development.”

Obtaining resources costs a lot of money, Koch said, and it takes time to figure out if an initiative is truly “cutting-edge” or a different version of the same thing already offered in the district.

In response, she said Seneca Valley dedicates a lot of effort to securing grants and evaluating curriculum.

Receiving a $100,000 grant from the Penguins Foundation for technology equipment was a “huge step” in getting the district’s Creativity Innovation Research Center off the ground, Koch said. The CIRC program started in 2017, she said, and promotes critical thinking, creativity and collaboration through project-based learning.

Updating aging infrastructure is another challenge, Vitale said.

She said the district is involved in remodeling its intermediate high school.

“It’s easy to build a square building and put a window in it, but a science classroom doesn’t look anything like when I was a student,” Vitale said. “We have to think about things like, well, what does a robotics classroom look like?”

At Slippery Rock Area School District, a nearly $30 million renovation and expansion project will be underway, affecting both the middle and high school buildings.

Several Slippery Rock school board candidates expressed aging infrastructure was a priority for the district.

Teachers are also becoming more involved in fostering students’ social-emotional health.

“It’s rewarding because you get to know the kids better, and see them from different angles,” Kelly said. “It definitely takes extra time and a little extra effort to be the best at many different things.”

Keith Dils, dean of the College of Education at Slippery Rock University, said future educators at SRU are taught to carefully consider their students’ mental health.

“Things like social media have created issues in terms of mental health,” Dils said. “Admission issues in terms of anxiety, created issues in terms of divisiveness, created issues in terms of socialization. And so it creates an environment where we have to be producing teachers and supporting teachers, so that the environments are as supportive and aimed at learning as they are at getting additional help.”

“What we're seeing, sort of too fast, is that our students definitely have more mental health and emotional needs that we have to address than we ever had before,” White said.

Kristen Czubiak, principal of Slippery Rock Area Elementary School, said she is fully committed to promoting social-emotional learning.

“We’ve been here through the pandemic, we’ve told students to distance, not to play together,” Czubiak said. “Now we’re back to the way things should be. We’re teaching kids to share … and to combat some of those things we suffered through the pandemic.”

Czubiak has spearheaded two initiatives to promote an inclusive and positive atmosphere at school.

A book vending machine was implemented at the school last year and is now part of a schoolwide rewards program that encourages kind behavior.

She said students and staff members alike are excited about the vending machine, which holds picture and chapter books donated by the Slippery Rock Area Elementary Parents and Teachers Cooperating for Children.

Czubiak and community members raised $6,000 for the vending machine, she said.

She fundraised again, raising around $30,000 with the Slippery Rock community for an accessible rock climbing wall that was installed in the gym in February.

“It’s wonderful for physical activity,” Czubiak said. “It’s something all students will be able to participate in. We have many special needs students in the building.”

The climbing wall also will be used as an incentive for positive behavior, she said.