CTE Expo 2026 Was Actually Pretty Cool
Went to the Poway Unified CTE Expo with Chet and Kash — live sheep, robots, guinea pigs, CSSE demos, and pizza. Here's what went down.
📅 May 21, 2026 — Del Norte High School
CTE Expo 2026 Was Actually Pretty Cool
So me, Chet, and Kash went to the CTE Expo last Thursday and I genuinely didn’t think it was gonna be that interesting going in. School event on a weeknight, you know how that usually goes. But it ended up being one of those things where you’re still talking about it on the way home, which is a good sign.
We got there and were walking around outside first and randomly spotted a hopscotch drawn on the ground near the entrance — no idea who put it there or if it was part of something, but Kash immediately did it. Full commitment. That kind of set the vibe for the night honestly, nobody was taking it too seriously and it was just fun to walk around.
The expo itself was at Del Norte, which was the host school this year. Basically every high school in Poway Unified had booths set up — Del Norte obviously, but also Rancho Bernardo, Westview, Poway High, Mt. Carmel. All the CTE programs from each school got a table or a space to show off what they’ve been doing all year. It was packed, way more people than I expected.
💻 CSSE Booth
Torrin at the CS Booth
First booth we actually stopped at for real was the CSSE one. Computer Science and Software Engineering. Torrin was there and he was actually demoing stuff instead of just standing there, which made a big difference. Like he was walking people through the project, answering questions, the whole thing. You could tell he knew what he was talking about.
The projects on the table ranged a lot — some were portfolio sites, a few were games, one had a whole backend thing going. Some of them were genuinely polished in a way where you’d forget a high schooler made it. Chet kept asking Torrin questions and they ended up in a whole conversation about how the game logic worked, so we were there for a while.
CSSE is the CS pathway at Del Norte and it covers a lot of ground — web dev, game engines, APIs, that kind of stuff. But seeing the actual output at the booth is a better pitch than anything written in the course catalog. Honestly if you’re a freshman trying to pick electives, just come to this expo.
🐑 Agriculture Booth
There Were Sheep. Real Ones.
Okay so I heard something before I saw it and then turned around and there were live animals at one of the booths. Guinea pigs and sheep. At a school expo. Inside.
The agriculture program brought them in and that booth had a crowd around it for basically the entire night. Which makes sense because nobody expects to walk into a high school gym and pet a sheep. Kash was over there for way too long.
But beyond the obvious novelty of it, the ag program is actually doing real stuff — animal care, livestock science, sustainable farming, plant biology. The students there knew their animals well and were actually explaining the program while people interacted with them, so it wasn’t just a stunt. You’d walk up thinking it was funny and leave having learned something. That’s a well-run booth.
The guinea pigs were also just really cute, not gonna lie.
🤖 Robotics
The FRC Robots Were Huge
I knew robotics was going to be there but I didn’t realize they were bringing the actual competition robots. FRC robots are not small — these are full-size machines built to compete in real FIRST Robotics matches and seeing one in person when you haven’t before is kind of a lot. They’re heavy, they move fast, and the amount of work that clearly went into each one is hard to process standing next to it.
PUSD has multiple FRC teams across different schools and a few of them had their bots out. The students were running them and explaining the design — drivetrain decisions, the intake mechanism, how the autonomous routine works. Chet is way more into the mechanical side than I am so he was asking about the build process and they had real answers, not just surface level stuff.
FRC teams spend months on these. Like the whole school year basically. The expo is one of the only times most people get to actually see what that work produces, so it was cool that they brought the real thing instead of just photos.
🎨 Everything Else
Rest of the Booths
There was a lot more to see beyond those three. Digital Media had students showing video production work and some graphic design stuff that was genuinely impressive. Health Science had a whole setup explaining the medical pathway, which seems like a big deal at a few of the PUSD campuses. Business and marketing programs were there too.
Each booth had a different energy, which made walking around actually interesting. Some were super demo-heavy and technical, some were more like presentations, and then obviously some had live animals. You never really knew what the next table was going to be, which kept it moving.
There were also industry people and community members walking around — parents, professionals, random adults who work in those fields. A few booths had students in actual conversations with them, which is not something that happens in a normal school day. That part felt real.
🍕 After
Then We Got Pizza
After we walked around and saw most of it, me, Chet, and Kash left and got pizza. Can’t remember whose idea it was but it was the right call. We were there talking about the expo for like half the meal — Kash kept bringing up the sheep, Chet wanted to go back and ask Torrin more about the game engine. Good night.
If you’ve never been to one of these expos and you go to a PUSD school, it’s worth showing up to at least once. It runs like an open house so you can just walk in, go around for an hour, and leave. No pressure. And there’s a decent chance something there surprises you.
🔗 Links