The life of a P-Tech student in Newburgh

By: Lina Wu
Posted 10/2/19

After finishing their second period, Alana Harris and Christian Molina hop on a school bus from Newburgh Free Academy’s North Campus to SUNY Orange Middletown. Depending on the day, Harris and …

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The life of a P-Tech student in Newburgh

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After finishing their second period, Alana Harris and Christian Molina hop on a school bus from Newburgh Free Academy’s North Campus to SUNY Orange Middletown. Depending on the day, Harris and Molina take two or three college level classes.
Around 2:30 p.m., the two return to Newburgh Free Academy’s North Campus. While other students head home, Harris and Molina stay longer after school to take a support module class. Harris and Molina are in their last year of the Newburgh Free Academy P-Tech program.
“You’re looked at more like an adult there [the college level classes],” said Harris. Even though classes are longer, “we kind of have more freedom which is really cool.” Despite the liberty of being in college classes, for Molina “It can be kind of challenging.”
For students like Anais Camacho, who still has a year or more left in the P-Tech program, the school day is shorter and requires extra high school classes. Next year, Camacho will be finishing off her last year of P-Tech and following the same schedule as Harris and Molina.
The Newburgh Free Academy P-Tech program has been around since 2014. P-Tech stands for Pathways in Technology Early College Highschool. P-Tech is a public-school model that gives students grades nine through 12 the opportunity to have career experiences and college experiences. According to IBM’s website, there are 200 P-Tech programs with more than 100,000 students in 18 countries. Newburgh Free Academy is one of P-Tech’s many campuses in the United States.

The P-Tech program is partnered with liaisons from SUNY Orange and IBM. P-Tech lasts anywhere from four to six years. Students receive both their associate degree and high school diploma at the end of the program. For students, courses are taken at SUNY Orange and Newburgh Free Academy. During the summer, students have summer internships with major companies like IBM.
Harris, Molina, and Camacho are seniors at the Newburgh Free Academy. Harris and Molina took on the four-year path, while Camacho took on the five-year path. Harris and Molina will be graduating with their associate degrees in cybersecurity this year. Camacho will be graduating with her associate degree in cybersecurity in one year. All three recently returned from their summer internships. The internships were a total of six weeks.
While interning at IBM, Harris worked on video editing to instruct users on IBM’s Watson Quality Advisor program. Due to her own inexperience with the program, Harris could edit videos to relate to users. Molina worked on the documentation of fiber optic cables on the test floor of IBM. Molina learned about checking the security, and state of the cables.
Camacho interned at Global Technology Services. She worked on updating, and creating records. Camacho managed to meet and interact with multiple members of the staff, and learn more about the average workday. Camacho also published success stories on Global Technology Services’ website.
The internships offered them clarification on their futures. Harris would like to finish up her education at a four-year university. When asked about the specific details of her future, Harris smiled uncertainly. “I have some ideas but they’re not set in stone,” Harris said.
Harris is currently interested in going into either cybersecurity or media. Camacho plans on working in cybersecurity for the Air Force after the program ends. Molina is interested in returning to school for his bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity. He is also interested in a potential apprenticeship with IBM.
The P-Tech program not only focuses on students’ careers and college educations, the program also focuses on giving students volunteer opportunities. The P-Tech program allows students to volunteer locally and in nations like Thailand.
Molina explained that he and Harris went to Thailand with 12 other students and two teachers. They visited three groups of people and did acts of service for them, like: building a concrete walkway, donating money, growing rice, and painting a school.
Without P-Tech, the students would be living different lives right now. “Before applying for the program, I was going to go to Maine and study culinary.” Harris finished, “I wouldn’t have gotten the same opportunities.”
Molina believes he’d, “probably be somewhere at the other high school working at the automotive program.” Camacho explained she initially planned on finishing high school in three years. “I would have had to double up on classes to graduate early. It would have been a lot more stressful.”
Newburgh Free Academy P-Tech has seen many years of success since its conception in 2014. The program reaches six years this year. Currently there are four P-Tech graduates working at IBM, soon that number will go up to five. Another graduate started a career at Global Foundries post-graduation. As of now, the program has successfully reached a 94% attendance rate.

Note: In a previous edition, Anais Camacho's last name was mispelled as Camcho.