During one of her recent shifts working at Carl Wunsche Sr. High School’s on-campus technology help desk, senior Destanee Kemper was troubleshooting broken Chromebooks – sorting the devices, assessing their issues, checking her inventory for replacement parts, and determining which units she had the ability to repair herself, and which would need to be sent on to the Spring ISD Technology Department.

“I turned this one on, and the screen was broken,” Kemper said, turning a Chromebook over in her hands, “but it turns out the hinge is also broken, so I have to remove all of this. Basically, I have to remove all of this front part.”

Some of the broken Chromebooks do get shipped to the district’s central office for repairs by technology staff, but Kemper and her Wunsche classmates are able to address a surprising range of hardware and software issues right on campus, using skills they’ve learned from CTE teacher Lisa Evans as part of the school’s Computer Technology and Maintenance pathway – or Computer Tech, as students call it.

“I didn’t even know how to open a computer before I got here, and I’d never tried to open one,” Kemper said. “I actually learned how to do it with Ms. Evans when we were taking Computer Maintenance, and she basically taught us how to take the computer apart and how to put it back together.”

Now in the spring of her senior year, Kemper and approximately 35 of her classmates are making the leap from Wunsche’s technology help desk – where cracked Chromebook screens are often the order of the day – to take part in a brand-new internship program Evans helped arrange for her second-semester seniors, completing a 40-hour, semester-long internship with the Lone Star College Technology Department, shadowing technology professionals and getting on-the-job experience ahead of graduation.

In all, Evans’ seniors are spread out across four different Lone Star campuses for their internships this semester – LSC-North Harris, LSC-University Park, LSC-Fallbrook, and LSC-Greenspoint.

Evans said that seeing her students make a smooth transition out of high school and into college and work – together with finding success in their chosen profession – has been one of the joys of her career.

“This is the reason why I teach, and the reason why I’ve taught here for 26 years,” Evans said. “I started my teaching career here, and I’m ending it here.”

Kemper’s Lone Star College technology internship has her working at the LSC-North Harris campus, where she’s had the chance to shadow technology team members at the college and receive professional training on a wide range of classroom technology needs all across the college campus.

“I think it’s teaching me how to handle my own life in the future,” said Kemper, who is headed to Marymount Manhattan University in New York after graduation to study art, illustration and animation. “Instead of just depending on the adults around me, I’ll be able to handle stuff like this – and any other thing I might need to tackle.”

Senior Isaac Sanchez’s assignment is also at the LSC-North Harris campus, where he said he’s learning a lot about technology, technology infrastructure, and even network security and software. He emphasized, however, that the benefits of the internship go well beyond the technical know-how.

“It’s not all just computers,” Sanchez said. “A lot of it is them kind of trying to set us up for the future. Like the other day, they were giving us advice on resumes and how to avoid having a bad resume, what the good parts are, and what you should keep in and what you should keep out, stuff like that.”

Wunsche High School CTE Academy Specialist Michael Buchanek said that all the hands-on, project-based work that Wunsche students participate in helps keep them on-track, inspired to do their best, and excited to be at school every day so they can participate in all that’s on offer to them.

“A lot of students will tell you that the class they enjoy the most is their CTE class,” Buchanek said, “because it’s bringing that real world in, and it’s allowing them to do hands-on things that they enjoy, and that they can see a future in.”

Even for students like Kemper, who have their sights set on leaving the Houston area after graduation, the CTE experience has opened up their world in ways that have piqued their curiosity and their desire to keep on learning.

“I feel like, before I really started to look into the computer and started to learn certain things about it, I didn’t really think about what I was using – I just kind of used it, and it wasn’t anything special,” Kemper said. “This has allowed me to look deeper, and to want to look further.”

Evans has been connecting her students to internships and other opportunities – both inside and outside Spring ISD – for years now, and has had the satisfaction of seeing many of her former students go on to launch their own technology careers in the district, including Class of 2016 graduate Nathaniel Flamiano, who has teamed up with his former teacher to help make the Wunsche technology help desk a success.

“I’ve been in the district since I was in Pre-K,” Flamiano said during a recent morning visit mentoring students at the campus help desk. “I had the opportunity to come to Wunsche and I was able to go to the computer pathway, taught by Ms. Evans, and she basically prepared me to work in the field.”

Evans, who is retiring in 2024, said that a lot has changed over the years. But even the pandemic, which made some things in the classroom more challenging, didn’t change the fundamentals.

“It felt like us as teachers needed to find a more creative way to teach,” Evans says. “If you can’t reach the student, you can’t build relationships with them, and you can’t teach them anything.”

One thing that has never been easier, Evans admitted, was convincing students of the importance of learning all they can about the technology that increasingly permeates their lives.

“I tell the kids,” Evans said, “‘Name one career that doesn’t use computers!’”