My, and many other high schools, offer an engineering course track called PLTW, aiming to introduce students to engineering in a broad manner. At Shadow Creek High School, the track, and my takeaways from them, are laid out as such:

• Freshman - Intro to Engineering Design (IED)

  • Dimensional analysis, good note-taking, 3D modeling with Inventor & 3D printing, sketching, toy-train project, automata project, reverse engineering practice

• Sophomore - Civil Engineering & Architecture (CEA) (or Aerospace Engineering, which was not offered in my time)

  • Various architectural styles, beam modeling, interior design with Revit, shed-project

• Junior - Principles of Engineering (POE) (Covid year)

  • Truss analysis, VEX robotics, simple and compound machines, marble sorter project, mousetrap car project, 

• Senior - Engineering Design & Development (EDD)

  • Extended teamwork w/ cooperation, brainstorming, in-depth research into engineering problems, intro into Arduino microcontrollers & stepper motors, 

Not to be mistaken for the airport security group, TSA is the closest thing my HS had to an engineering club.

During a typical year, the fall semester is spent planning what events I would compete in, whether they were submissions, or live-events. Regional competitions were in mid-late February, where submissions, would be turned in, judged, then either qualified for state, or not. The live event I participated in, CAD: Engineering, usually took 3-4 hours, and took place in one of the classrooms at the hosting high school. 

After regional competitions, I would continue preparing for state (for the competitions I qualified in), which took place in mid-late April in Fort Worth. For example, in my senior year, I qualified both for the 3d printed CO2 Research Racer (basically a 3d printed car with a CO2 canister strapped to it), and the CAD: Engineering events. The state competition was 3 days long, hosted at one of the convention centers in Fort Worth. 

My HS had two engineering teachers, Ms. Duff, whom I enjoyed having very much for IED, CEA, and EDD, as well as hosting/coordinating TSA and all 3d printing / laser cutting needs. Additionally she was a large reason that I ended up continuing engineering into college. The other engineering teacher shall remain unnamed in my portfolio, and they were a nice enough person, but not a great teacher for POE, and had some interesting character traits (to put things lightly).