Graphics Technology Academy (GTA) is a small school program offered at Woodside.

The program is designed for students who haven’t been motivated by regular academic courses and have a high interest in graphics and technology design. It starts sophomore year and continues until senior year graduation. The academy combines instruction through cross curricular project based learning. Students rotate through all their core classes together like English, Math, History and Career Technical Education (CTE) to prepare them for graphics and technology based jobs in the future.

“It’s a school within a school model where students not only take the classes they need to graduate high school, but they get a form of community along the way and mentorship,” GTA teacher and academy coordinator Jordan Filerman said.

As a teacher in the academy, Filerman ensures that his students are on track for community service and finding mentors for them based on the profession they want to pursue. Along with the classes students take, they also get to go on a field trip every quarter.

“GTA is fantastic and amazing,” sophomore and student in the program Angel Knight said. “I get all the cool teachers and on top of that we get field trips, my favorite thing has been the field trips, the first one was to Japan town, that was really fun.”

The academy has many benefits according to students, some include going on fun educational field trips, getting a lot of individual help from teachers and getting a mentor. Students do a lot of graphic design and artwork as well learning how to use the creative suite, Adobe and even doing animation senior year.

“GTA [is] both the artistic side as well as the technical side,” GTA and yearbook teacher Denise Lipiansky said.