Hoover High School’s Academy of Information Technology is a small school that was founded in 2005 under a California Partnership Grant. The foundation of the Academy of Information Technology is to work with students in a small environment to explore careers, technical skills, and academic excellence. Students enter the Academy in their 9th grade year with a CTE course on the Foundation of Information Technology and then are able to select a pathway into Geo-spatial Information Systems (GIS), CyberSecurity, or Multimedia. Each technology course offers articulation with the local Community College to earn college credit. The students will be in a cohort of students in their academic classes to integrate projects that reflection the ‘real world’ throughout their high school experience. We provide Project Based Learning in our classrooms as well as opportunities to learn new technology skills through partnerships with community organizations. Our students come back to us years later and discuss how our authentic projects and supportive atmosphere gave them a family at school that helped them navigate the complexities of the world, college, and work force.