This blog series provides readers with insight on the valuable content that is being shared at the Career Clusters ™ Institute. Guest bloggers are among teachers, faculty, researchers and other experts that will present at the national gathering in Washington, DC in June.

Nancy Null is a Curriculum Lead at Towson University in Towson, Maryland and Co-Director at Maryland CTE IT Program Affiliate.

Why aren’t Career Technical Education (CTE) instructors providing the professional development to academic disciplines around Common Core State Standards? Having taught in both academic (English) and CTE (Cisco Networking Academy) worlds, I can state unequivocally that academic teachers have much to learn from any outstanding CTE instructor.

Standards are nothing new to either academic or CTE worlds; however, CTE standards do more closely model that common set of skills now recognized as crucial to both college-and career-readiness. Moreover, exemplary real-world CTE instruction more closely aligns with the learning style of today’s youth than the paper-centric, two-dimensional world of traditional academia.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved teaching English. But I found myself continually searching outside the literary box for ways to connect my students to a real world of prose and poetry that spoke to them. Making that connection from “the other side”—from CTE to reading, writing, speaking and listening—was much easier. My Cisco students were already comfortable and confident in their technical world, armed with knowledge just waiting to be communicated. They could connect to authentic contexts for the “deeper dive” that the Common Core State Standards require.

CTE teachers have long and deep experience shaping and guiding diverse populations of students toward common industry-standard goals; we know that real education takes place only when teachers have a reason to teach, and students have a reason to learn. We can lead the way in creating a real 21st century schoolhouse—a place where students hear the same message in all classes, meet the same expectations, and develop the same skillsets throughout their educational experience. That schoolhouse will be standards-driven, but there will be nothing “standard” about it!

Come hear more at our session: Techniques to Show Alignment to National Education Standards (Common Core) and How to Use Them, Tuesday, June 19: 2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.

You’ll see a process one technology education program uses to map and document alignment to national education standards such as Common Core and STEM, and the tool I use to help education institutions articulate alignment and hear from one university how they put into action.

Ramona Schescke, Member Services Manager

This blog series provides readers with insight on the valuable content that is being shared at the Career Clusters ™ Institute. Guest bloggers are among teachers, faculty, researchers and other experts that will present at the national gathering in Washington, DC in June.

Sonja Wright-McMurray is the Associate Director for the Arkansas Department of Career Education – Career and Technical Education Division (Arkansas Works). She is the founding Director and responsible for providing statewide oversight of the Arkansas Works Initiative. Wright-McMurray holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Education in Higher Education Administration from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. She also holds a Master of Science in Rehabilitation Counseling from Drake University.
As Career and Technical Education (CTE) administrators and teachers try to ensure that a qualified workforce stands ready to fill 21st century jobs, one of our struggles is ensuring our students are college- and career-ready. That is the mission of Arkansas Works.

Arkansas Works is a collaborative effort among the departments of Career Education, Education, Higher Education, Workforce Services, and Economic Development; the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority; the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges, and the State Chamber of Commerce.

Funded by the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, this initiative is a three-component system that includes:

•The Arkansas College and Career Planning System, a web-based career planning system powered by Kuder™;
•The College and Career Coaches Program and;
•The ACT Academy Program

Over the past two years, Arkansas Works has addressed the issue of students being under-prepared to pursue postsecondary education and enter the workforce in the most impoverished areas of the state. The program strongly emphasizes the benefits of CTE courses, apprenticeship programs and work-based learning opportunities. Arkansas high schools served by the program have seen an increase in applications for financial aid, increase in the college-going rate, increase in ACT scores, increase in opportunities for employment and a decrease in the amount of students taking remediation courses at the postsecondary level.

Learn more about how you replicate this program and achieve similar results in your state for your students by attending Sonja’s session at the National Career Clusters™ Institute: Arkansas Works – Creating a Competitive Workforce through State and Community Collaboration on Wednesday, June 20.

Ramona Schescke, Member Services Manager

This blog series provides readers with insight on the valuable content that will be shared at the upcoming Career Clusters ™ Institute. Guest bloggers are among teachers, faculty, researchers and other experts that will present at the national gathering in Washington, DC in June.

Dr. James R. Stone, III is the Director of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education (NRCCTE) at the University of Louisville. Dr. Stone’s research has focused on strategies that improve the capacity of CTE programs to improve the engagement, achievement, and transition of secondary and postsecondary CTE participants, including longitudinal studies on the effects of work-based learning and the effect of whole-school, CTE-based school reforms on educational outcomes of youth in high-poverty communities. A former editor for the Journal of Vocational Education Research, Stone has published numerous articles, books, and book chapters on CTE.

Programs of study (POS) are the most recent effort in the United States to improve the transition of youth from high school to the workplace. In most industrialized nations, one national institution governs education; in the United States, schools, state and local governments, and business organizations—operating in very loose partnerships with the federal government—have sought to support youth in successfully and efficiently transitioning from public education to further education or careers.

As a result, the default structural support for youth transition to the labor market has become what most term “college,” usually defined as a degree from a two-year or four-year postsecondary institution. Believing that the high school diploma no longer signifies a meaningful standard of achievement, and lacking a national system of industry credentials, employers have come to rely on college degrees as proof of preparedness and competency. This assumption has, for better or worse, led to the notion of “college for all” as the best means of preparing all youth for the emergent labor market.

“College for all” has evolved in recent years to incorporate the idea that public education ought to prepare youth for college and careers. “College and career readiness” is a phrase that has captured the imagination if not the vocabulary of state and federal policymakers in the United States as the solution to preparing all youth for a successful adulthood.

Yet the youth of today are moving into an uncertain labor market marked by high unemployment, changing skill demands, and intense global competition. POS are seen as the key to achieving a truly career and college-ready high school graduate who will be prepared to succeed in these uncertain times.

Three questions have driven the National Research Center’s POS research agenda, tied to our overarching interest in student engagement, achievement, and transition. If POS are fully implemented:

• Will more students graduate from high school—evidence of their engagement?
• Will students’ academic and technical achievement increase?
• Will more students transition successfully into the workplace or further education and training?

Learn more about what the research shows are the measurable effects of POS on increasing student engagement, improving student achievement, and enhancing student transition to further education and work by attending Jim Stone’s presentation entitled National Research Center for CTE: what the Research Reveals about Programs of Study at the 2012 Career Clusters™ Institute.

Ramona Schescke, Member Services Manager

This blog series provides readers with insight on the valuable content that will be shared at the upcoming Career Clusters ™ Institute. Guest bloggers are among teachers, faculty, researchers and other experts that will present at the national gathering in Washington, DC in June. The session highlighted below is a pre-session, which is scheduled for Sunday, June 17, 2012, 1 p.m.–3 p.m. Pre-sessions charge a separate fee; you can add a pre-session to your general registration as you complete the registration form online.

Dr. John C. Foster is first and foremost a dedicated leader and advocate for individuals preparing for the workforce. He currently serves as the President/CEO of NOCTI and its sister company The Whitener Group. These organizations provide technical performance assessment for career and technical, secondary, and post-secondary programs in 48 of the 50 states. They also provide career and technical teacher occupational competency testing for universities delivering teacher training. Lastly, these firms provide assessment development, delivery, and reporting help for private industry and associations.

As professionals in the field of workforce training, specifically technical skills training, we get bombarded by information from multiple sources telling us how better to prepare our workforce. Some employers will tell us, “just give me someone who comes to work on time and we’ll do the rest,” others expect our public education system to turn out journeymen upon high school graduation. Other voices even tell us to give up on technical training and concentrate all our public education dollars on English, math and science.

To make matters worse, we are often told that the job we are doing just isn’t good enough and they claim that the federal legislation that funds our community is ineffective legislation. Even the U.S. Education Secretary has said that Career and Technical Education (CTE) is only good at providing “islands of excellence”, insinuating that the bulk of our programs need a lot of work!

In February of 2012 and then again in March, NOCTI presented longitudinal technical assessment data that indicates that as a nation our technical competence IS increasing. It indicates that the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 IS having a positive effect, and it indicates that states are implementing instructional improvement programs based on real data from objective third-party evaluators!

The presentation will look at examples of national data, state data, and local data and the consistency of the patterns of improvement that our CTE community is making! CTE has a tremendous impact on our economy, our citizens, our educational system, our infrastructure, and our very way of life. Isn’t it about time you knew the truth?

Add this Pre-Session to your Institute experience now! If you have already registered for the National Career Clusters™ Institute, you can still sign up for Dr. Foster’s Pre-Session now. Call our office at 301-588-9630 for more information on how to sign up.

Ramona Schescke, Member Services Manager

This blog series provides readers with insight on the valuable content that will be shared at the upcoming Career Clusters ™ Institute. Guest bloggers are among teachers, faculty, researchers and other experts that will present at the national gathering in Washington, DC in June.

Sandy Mittelsteadt is president of her own company, Zayn Consulting. Zayn Consulting is a company that specializes in connecting businesses to education. Before developing her company, Sandy was the Executive Director of the National Career Academy Coalition. She is also the co-author of The Career Academy Toolkit and Sticky Learning. Through the years, Sandy has taught at virtually every level—from preschoolers in Saudi Arabia to high-risk youth in Missouri.

Looking for ways to turn your classroom into a student-centered, active learning environment? Wanting to connect the academic concepts you teach to real-life experiences and opportunities your students understand and value?

All teachers have had their share of students who manage to memorize enough facts to pass a test and then walk out of the classroom with little retention of the concepts they just “learned.” Needless to say, these students are also clueless as to how this knowledge fits into the overall scheme of things in the real world. In days gone by, these students might have been chided for learning in such a way that knowledge “went in one ear and out the other.”

Sticky Learning, on the other hand, encourages learning that lasts for a lifetime. It introduces an innovative blend of several tried and true and educational strategies:

• It’s integrated curriculum, but more…
• It’s action-based inquiry, but more…
• It’s discovery learning, but more…
• It has real world application, but more…

Learn how to plan and implement integrated learning with action-based inquiry, discovery learning, and real world application. This presentation will give successful models suitable for individual, team, academic, and Career Technical Education (CTE) applications and supply examples how to actively engaged students in discovering knowledge and skills.

Sticky Learning prepares students for success in the real world. Although it will help students to be successful test-takers, its aim is to spark student curiosity and energize classrooms. There is a subtle, but powerful, shift from “what” students need to learn to “how” they acquire and apply knowledge. Quite simply, students learn how to learn. They come to understand “why” they benefit from broadening their horizons beyond classroom walls.

Sticky Learning is active, purposeful, contextual learning.

Attend Sandy’s Sticky Learning Pre-Session, and receive her book entitled, Sticky Learning. Sandy will walk you through the eleven chapters of this “Make It Real Planning Guide for Engaging Students in Project-Based Learning” and you will leave with at least one excellent generic project-based unit with an economic theme that you can immediately teach in your classroom. Sandy will also guide you to Web sites that contain quality project-based units.

Add this Pre-Session to your Institute experience now! If you have already registered for the National Career Clusters™ Institute, you can still sign up for Sandy’s Pre-Session. Find out more

Ramona Schescke, Member Services Manager