Fireworks are great, but lighting up the night sky with drones programmed by high school students is also quite impressive—and far less smelly. In this district, students are getting paid for this unique skill.
The Innovation Center, a 50,000-square-foot building located in Colorado’s St. Vrain Valley Schools, transcends traditional instruction by focusing on students’ postsecondary skills. One of those programs is the world’s first high school, student-led outdoor drone performance team.
Since its launch in April 2024, the team has performed nearly 50 shows, with its next one scheduled for Monday night at the 2026 Future of Education Technology Conference, says Joe McBreen, assistant superintendent of innovation.
“They do everything from our local homecoming to big events and conferences like FETC,” he says. “They flew a Fourth of July show here in our local community. They do all sorts of shows for all sorts of audiences.”
Connecting students to high-paying careers
Drone performance is a lot like your typical baseball team, McBreen explains. In baseball, players are assigned to different positions, like catcher, left field or pitcher. In drone performance, each student plays a critical role in designing, programming and choreographing each show.
Every performance is designed based on the visions of the clients, many of whom pay the students as contractors to perform for professional drone show companies.
“Say it’s our local city government putting on the Fourth of July show,” McBreen says. “The team hosts a series of meetings asking our local officials, ‘What story do you want to tell?’ Storytelling is one of those durable skills that everyone from Google to Facebook talks about.”
From there, those stories are translated into drones through music, lighting and animation using tools like Cinema 4D, 3D modeling software used in drone performance and filmmaking.
“You’d be blown away at how many employers need Cinema 4D experts,” McBreen says. Graduates are overwhelmed by the number of jobs they are eligible for because of their drone skills.
“It’s a really marketable skill,” McBreen says. “It’s not hypothetical. A lot of times in education, we call it career and technical education, but how many kids are actually getting paid? This program totally upends that model.”
At FETC, 500 drones will fill the night sky on Monday, Jan. 12, at 6 p.m. The show itself will reflect this year’s conference theme: game-changers.
“When attendees see the show, I want them to know that when you give high school kids authentic work opportunities and cutting-edge tools backed by a great partnership, the future is literally limitless,” McBreen says.
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