Skyler Boucher completed 2 years of the Plumbing and Heating program with Mr. Nick Smith and graduated from Maranacook Community High School in 2020. He is employed as an Apprentice Plumber at Ranor Mechanical in Jay. Skyler said, “I didn’t want to go to CATC, but my parents had me give it a try. It was life changing. I knew I didn’t want to be working in a cubicle for the rest of my life. I found my career path.” Chris Fortier, Field Operations Manager at Ranor Mechanical said, “Skyler had been working at Ranor for about 3 weeks when he had to miss an hour of work to attend a student orientation at Central Maine Community College. The next day he saw me and asked when would be a good time to make up the hour of work he had missed. I told him don’t ever lose that work ethic. You can teach people a lot of things, but you can’t teach work ethic. This is why Skyler is the kind of employee we are looking for. He is reliable, hardworking and just an overall good person.”
Our Alumni Spotlight shines on Katrina Booth. Katrina graduated from Maranacook Community High School in 2016. She completed the Early Childhood Education program at Capital Area Technical Center during her senior year in high school. She originally took the Early Childhood Education program in hopes that it would help her further her future career in adolescent psychology. In order to make sure she had all her bases covered, she also signed up for a dual enrollment college course in psychology. These two course enrollments quickly taught her that this career path was NOT for her. She remembers loving her time with the pre-k students at CATC and in turn dreading her time in psychology class. Senior year in high school was really when her passion for education began. Katrina says, “My passion for teaching had never been apparent to me prior to my time at CATC. In fact, I recall saying earlier in life that I would never become a teacher, especially a high school teacher!” Now she sits at a desk in her very own High School English classroom at Winthrop High School. Katrina’s principal at Winthrop High School, Mr. Mark Campbell says, “We were fortunate here at Winthrop to find Katrina ‘Kat’ Booth in a large, competitive pool of applicants for our open English position. Kat has a strong command of her content which is evident through her lessons and her discussions with her department colleagues. Her ability to be an inspiring educator in all of her classes speaks volumes of her strengths. She has some tough assignments, but she is able to maintain a safe learning environment all while creating and maintaining positive relationships with her students. She is a first year teacher with the skill set of a veteran teacher. Winthrop High School is fortunate to have her on the team.” Katrina further says, “CATC sparked my love for education and I started college focused in Early Childhood Education because of the program and the people there. As I worked through my classes, I later found my passion for the secondary education setting and later changed my major. I can say without a doubt that without CATC, I don’t believe that my path would have taken the road that it did. Because of them I am able to sit here in my first year of teaching and say that I truly enjoy each day with my students in my classroom.”