CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Efforts to expand career pathways for West Virginia high school students continue to grow.

West Virginia Director of Career Technical Education Adam Canter shared a positive update about the Classroom 2 Career (C2C) initiative during the June state Board of Education meeting.

Canter said the C2C initiative was launched around five years ago with a clear goal in mind: to prepare West Virginia youth for the workplace.

“It was basically 2.0 of what was Simulated Workplace, that was a national model for changing the classroom to being an actual simulated environment of what a student will experience in the actual real world.” Canter said.

Canter said C2C began with a simple question.

“How can we get students out of a simulated environment, actually get real business partners, and get them employed or at least to experience something that they’re going to be in the real world?” Canter described.

A database was launched toward achieving that goal. Canter said the database was a communication tool for teachers, students, and administrators to log all of the activities they were already doing.

Canter reported that in 2025, more than 2,000 students worked in C2C apprenticeships. Those students garnered more than $5 million and worked more than 350,000 hours through 600 business partners that work with Classroom 2 Career.

The West Virginia Department of Education had been preparing students through its Career Technical Education (CTE), but Canter said not enough people knew about it. The collection tool addressed that issue by becoming a hub for CTE and related information.

Canter said C2C has two categories that activities fit into — “community” and “on-the-job training.”

The community category refers to work requiring collaboration, Canter explained.

“(It’s) where we track when a student does something out of the classroom with some type of partner,” Canter said. “So maybe they take a food truck and they work on a Friday night, and the classroom works as an entity, as a business partner, they get experience what it would be like to own that food truck, or they get to change the oil, or they get to cut someone’s hair in cosmetology, and we track all of those hours under a category called ‘community.’”

The second category is “on-the-job” training.

“This is what we historically think of as real experience, a student gets hired, they go to work,” Canter said. “In that category, that’s what we try to focus most of our reporting on, because that’s what people think of when they think of an internship or an apprenticeship.”

Canter emphasized that the C2C initiative is a big deal, and he’s excited to see it continue to grow. He mentioned that CTE’s impacts are occurring all around the state, including healthcare partnerships. Canter said 51 schools are gotten on board with pipelines that enable students to complete clinical work, right at hospitals.

Canter mentioned three partnerships in particular that exemplify the WVDE’s goals.

The Governor’s School of Entrepreneurship (GSE) program is coming up in July on Marshall University’s campus. The program has been redesigned for this year, becoming an immersive 10-day experience to teach students about starting businesses.

Hope Gas and the West Virginia Department of Education’s partnership for the Hope Pathways program in Logan County. The program is open for high school juniors and seniors, providing them with the technical skills required for careers with Hope Gas and related sectors. The idea behind the initiative is to boost West Virginia’s workforce by keeping its homegrown talent closer to home.

Most recently, the WVDE and Marshall University announced an aviation partnership to launch the AIRWV (Aviation Innovation and Readiness West Virginia) Pathway. AIRWV will give students from Grades K-12 introductions into the aviation industry. The partnership is for five years, with the idea of continuing it further into the future.

Five pilot counties are already on board with the AIRWV Pathway: Barbour, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, and Logan. The WVDE said those counties will roll out the program in Fall 2026.

Canter said these partnerships impact students of all ages.

“The neat things about these three is that we’re starting in elementary school,” Canter said. “We’re doing awareness campaigns with teachers; we’re creating universal trainings that we’re all speaking the same language. We’re moving that training to middle school, so they’ll do exploration of careers in that field. Then, in high school, we’re tailoring it to what post-secondary opportunities and employment opportunities exist.”

Canter mentioned a Wetzel County student’s story with Classroom 2 Career as a shining example of the initiative. Canter said the student, John Wade, received an internship at American Heavy Plates, and his school took him to work, to get a social security card, and all the components he would need.

Canter noted said the company decided to hire Wade, and his career is all thanks to the Classroom 2 Career apprenticeship.

State Board of Education Vice President Victor Gabriel praised Canter for his enthusiastic report.

“I feel your excitement clear up here, you’re one of those rare people that loves what they do,” Gabriel said. “I’m sure that’s not your only success story, I’m sure there’s thousands.”

Gabriel emphasized that career readiness should be a big priority for the state board.

“Because not everybody is college material,” Gabriel said. “I think that’s an area that we really need to concentrate on.”