Blazers, slacks, dress shoes and royal blue polos cover the hotel rooms of Texas High’s TAFE students as they prepare for days full of hard work, nerves and overwhelming determination. From Feb. 17-19, 2025, Texas High’s TAFE club traveled to Galveston, Texas to compete in the state conference.
“TAFE stands for Texas Association of Future Educators, [which] is an organization that helps our educators grow,” TAFE advisor Lisa McCloskey said. “[Students] can compete in different events, such as writing children’s books or giving TED talks about education. We can also attend breakout sessions where they learn more about [becoming] educators in the future.”
Texas High offers countless CTE classes ranging from welding and aviation to human services and health sciences. These students took their dedication to the future to the next step, engaging in courses and engrossing themselves in the behind-the-scenes work in the field of education with classes like Teach TISD, instructional practices and more. The passion some students discovered while completing everyday work influenced them to advance into the TAFE club and showcase their drive.
“I competed in Creative Lecture, an individual event which is similar to a TED Talk, about whether artificial intelligence should be implemented in schools or not,” sophomore Camila Lusinchi said. “I personally think AI should be [applied] in schools just because it’s a tool that can enhance learning and [assist] teachers [in] helping us learn better and ensure long term memorization and such effects of results when testing.”
Although the justification of the negative effects of AI could be presented to combat Lusinchi’s reasoning, she made sure to take into consideration opposite perspectives and allow room for contradiction.
“My speech was called ‘What am I asking ChatGPT?’, and I see it as a double-edged sword because it can be very beneficial but it can also be dangerous because it reduces students’ critical thinking skills,” Lusinchi said. “If I continued into education, I would most likely only use AI to make lesson plans and allow my students to use it for things like Quizlet AI and other study tools. ChatGPT simply gives you the answer, but if they use other artificial intelligence systems like Quizlet, they can learn it and study it, which leaves room for enrichment and absorbing information.”
The variety of categories allowed every student to put their time, energy and commitment into something that they are passionate about and could potentially use in the future if they pursue education and training.
“For [our] project, my partner and I recorded our CTE programs around the school, and we made a video about it in Spanish, mainly because I feel like a lot of people don’t know about the CTE programs that [are] offered at Texas High,” senior Leslie Moya said. “CTE classes offer better opportunities for the future, [such as] finding jobs that people are interested in.”
The hard work of these students certainly doesn’t go unnoticed, with 42 club members competing at the area level–22 of which advanced to state–and three being national qualifiers at the state conference.
“When we made it to state, I was happy because I was like ‘oh my gosh, I made it to state’ and then it just grew because we advanced to nationals,” Moya said. “I was nervous but also really excited because there were a lot of people competing. That amount of people makes you realize your success.”
Taking on the role of students preparing to step into a future career, TAFE members take the traits they appreciate from their own teachers and implement that into the method and structure for their potential future classroom.
“I’ve dreamed of teaching bilingual [students in] first grade, hopefully all subjects because I feel like in the early years and in first grade all students start becoming themselves and knowing their personalities better,” Moya said. “I just want to create a relationship with them so they can succeed in the future.”