KAYSVILLE, Utah — Utah students are returning to school this week and several hundred will be attending a “non-traditional” school in Davis County.
It’s the Catalyst School and Thursday was day one of year two for this magnet school.
For high school students who might want something more or different than traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic, Catalyst prepares them for real world opportunities that may enable them to jump right into the workplace.
Students from eleven different high schools within the Davis district come to Catalyst to receive what’s called "Capstone" experiences.
“Someone who wants to accelerate their learning and have an experience with industry partners,” said Tyler Poll, Director of Davis Catalyst. “We have over 100 industry partners, 100 businesses that give our kids projects to work on.”
Poll says those pathways range from marketing, entrepreneurship and culinary, where students do catering and run a café.
There’s audio and video suites where they’re working on music videos, commercials and doing podcasts.
There’s also cyber security work where students learn how to hack and how to prevent hacking.
Catalyst also has video game and web development.
Poll says students last year produced more than 50 websites for local companies.
“Ultimately, we want kids to learn what they want to do, learn what they are passionate about and continue in that area,” Poll said.
Catalyst is the newest of eight such schools in Utah and one of only 300 in the country.
One of their stated core values is professional skill development.
They want students who can collaborate, communicate and do things employers are looking for.
“So we’re trying to instill these values in our students to help them be successful no matter what they do,” Poll said. “Whether that’s university, whether it’s college, whether it’s straight to the workforce, we want them to be prepared for the next step.”
Poll says it appears more students are searching out Catalyst to take the next step.
Enrollment a year ago was 350 students but this year they will start with nearly 600 high school students.
For more information on the programs click here.
