By Lee Denney
Pursue your passions at CareerTech
A love of computers runs in Joseph Gordon’s family.
His father works in information technology, and Gordon took his first programming class in middle school. He was intrigued by how computers worked, but he wasn’t really enthralled with programming. A few years later, he toured Moore Norman Technology Center and was intrigued by the network and cloud administration course.
The 16-year-old high school junior enrolled at Moore Norman Tech and was already A+ certified early in his first semester. When school let out for the summer, he accepted an unpaid internship with Norman Public Schools to repair MacBooks. He continued the internship after school started, working for NPS early in the morning, driving to Moore Norman Technology Center for class, working his after-school job at Schlotzsky’s and then going home to study.
But that’s not all. While interning at NPS, he completed his CompTia Net+ certification. He learned a lot as an unpaid intern, but he told his instructor, Todd Hendrickson, “I’d like to make some money.”
Hendrickson agreed it was time for Gordon to start getting compensated for his talents. He helped Gordon get a job with the Addison Group, running cable and providing an Ethernet network for T-Mobile during his senior year of high school. Gordon started at $15 an hour, but after he updated his resume to include his latest certification, his salary was bumped to $17 an hour.
In March 2022, two months before Gordon’s high school graduation, Dell approached him about a VxRail network support team they were putting together. VxRail is an appliance that provides networking, computing and management capabilities. Hendrickson helped Gordon prepare for an interview, and the high school senior was offered one of the 14 open positions. Gordon worked from home and was given a starting salary of $69,000 a year, plus benefits.
“The young man is ecstatic, and his future is set,” Hendrickson said.
As a technical support engineer, Gordon will troubleshoot customer issues with Dell’s VxRail, but he will also use his skills for personal projects, including cabling his house.
“I’m setting up a personal website to document my journey,” he said, “so that anyone who goes through the same journey has a potential guide.”
Gordon’s story is just one example of what Oklahoma CareerTech is doing for students across the state.
Through a network of school districts, technology centers, skills centers and Adult Education and Family Literacy providers, Oklahoma CareerTech is providing nearly half a million students each year an opportunity to explore their career interest and find a rewarding career.
Empowering students like Gordon to make informed career choices and creating a pool of skilled workers for Oklahoma employers to choose from is CareerTech’s mission. We stirve every day to provide students with skills demanded by the labor market in Oklahoma.
Several Oklahoma industries – broadband, aerospace, health care, automotive and construction – are struggling amid a shortage of skilled workers.
Our goal is to integrate academic skills into a real-world context by providing career-oriented courses, internships, apprenticeships and in-school programs that promote work readiness.
The skills obtained in these programs equip students with immediately employable skills and valuable knowledge to build on as they enter the workforce, as they did for Gordon.
Oklahoma is regularly recognized by other states for having one of the best CareerTech systems in the nation. That’s because we’ve built a reputation for being inclusive and breaking through barriers that traditionally separate the academic subjects from the skills and knowledge provided by career and technology education.
If you would like to learn more, visit our website at okcareertech.org.
Lee Denney is the interim state director of the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education. Denney served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 2004 to 2016. During her last two years in office, she served as speaker pro tempore.
