Tornado Watch?

I made it down to Daytona Beach with little fanfare. In fact, I flew from DCA to Charlotte and picked up the North Carolina crew and we all came on down to Daytona Beach and ultimately to the Hilton. As you can see, the weather did not exactly cooperate as we were under a tornado watch—and I thought the weather in DC was bad because it was getting cold!!

I was bummed that I got here just after the start of the tour that was arranged to a couple of local high schools. Luckily, Alisha Hyslop from our staff was here for that and wrote about it in the CTE Policy Watch blog.

The Region II conference really kicked off at the Opening Session. In this session, the Mainland High School Air Force Junior ROTC presented the colors and Melanie Galiardo and the audience sang “God Bless America.” 

This was a very interesting session that asked the question “Why ACTE?” Tom Besaw from Volusia County, Coleen Keffeler, ACTE Past President, and Melanie Galiardo from myvocalstudio.com teamed up for this unique session.

Throughout this session, the speakers were asking the attendees why they do what they do. When asked “Why do you teach?” some answers included “I believe in career and technical education” and “To influence and plant the seeds for students to lead productive lives.”

When asked what concerns people have, responses included:

• Student apathy
• Lack of parental support
• Lack of self-esteem
• Kids not actively involved

The point being made was that CTE answers all of these concerns and gives students both personal freedom and economic opportunity.

The unique thing about this presentation was that throughout, Galiardo sang songs that lead into the next part of the talk. For example, one of the songs she sang was Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. As you can see by the lyrics, it is appropriate for what most kids in the classroom are like.

For me, some of the interesting facts that were shared by the speakers included:

1. Every nine seconds someone drops out of high school
2. 3.8 million 18-24 year olds are neither employed nor in school
3. Of jobs that will be around by 2010, 36 percent will require some postsecondary education and 31 percent will require a bachelor’s degree.

The last question that was asked was “Why Change Anything?” And the answer provided by the speakers was that globalization has driven the economy to an individual level, which relates directly to what career and technical educators are doing in the classroom every day. These educators are giving students the skills and information they need to go out on their own to create new businesses and meet industry needs. In other words, CTE is uniquely positioned to help drive the economy into the next century.

The speakers also talked about the need for CTE to develop a new curriculum that is driven by data, which in some ways is being required either at the national or state levels. Keffeler mentioned that the student engagement is where we need to focus and shared a stat that found that two-thirds of students surveyed would have worked harder if more was demanded of them.

The session ended with the speakers calling for the attendees to go back to their schools and think about how CTE can address the needs of the entire education community and how we can get that word out!