Ponce Inlet Lighthouse

View from Lighthouse

After that brief excursion, I was able to squeeze in a run along the beach–just had to avoid the cars!

The Region II Awards Program was a nice dinner event in which the region announced its yearly awards for CTE educators. Marcia Day from Alabama hosted the awards program, serving as the Region II awards committee chairperson.

This year, the following awards, nominees and winners were recognized. The first award that was given was for the New Teacher of the Year. The two nominees were:

* Rene Day from Alabama
* Randall Elam from Tennessee

Rene Day won this award, but was unable to be in Daytona Beach.

The second award given was for Outstanding Career and Technical Educator. The recipient of this award was Paggie McSpadden from Alabama.

Paggie McSpadden receives award from ACTE Past President Coleen Keffeler

The final award given was for the Teacher of the Year. This year there were four nominees:

* Patrick Bello from North Carolina (unable to attend)
* Grace Decken from South Carolina
* Gracie Quarles from Virginia
* Felicia Williams from Alabama 

Teacher of the year candidates

The winner of the Region II Teacher of the Year Award is…..

Grace Decken receives Teacher of the Year Award from ACTE Past President Coleen Keffeler

After a well-deserved round of applause, the awards dinner concluded and the attendees went off to explore or to sleep. Although the Region II conference officially ended this morning with a breakfast, I had an early flight so I had to miss it.

All in all I think the attendees had a good conference and all thanks go to Marsan Carr and the folks in Florida for being gracious and accommodating hosts. People are already talking about next year’s conference in Savannah, Georgia! See you there.

1. Alabama–They had about 50 people at their Policy Seminar and about 1,500 at their state conference. While they secured $2.5 million for Alabama Career Tech, it was a cut from the original $5 million that was in the budget.

2. Florida–Funding continues to be an issue in Florida. They have had some budget cuts. The state is piloting a new category where institutions join for a fee and individuals pay a small fee to join a Division. It will be interesting to see how that works–it may be a model. They are working on membership as they have 700 out of about 20,000 CTE instructors.

3. Georgia–Continues its strong membership growth–now over 3,000. They had an increase in attendance at their summer conference. Georgia has also had some budget cuts and anticipates more this year. The Region II conference in 2009 will be held in Savannah.

4. Kentucky–They had a good summer conference with more than 1,600 attendees and 75 exhibitors. Its three goals for the year are membership, leadership and public relations. It is considering a dues increase that will include liability insurance.

5. North Carolina–It has seen an increase of about 200 members this year. They have a new Web site. One of their concerns is the lack of CTSO information in the curriculum. It is the site of this year’s ACTE Convention.

6. South Carolina–Ray Boland is now the Exec. More than 2,500 educators attended the state conference this summer. The state is also experiencing cuts, with more possibly on the way. The state is doing a couple of membership programs related to the Division with the most members and the individual who recruits the most new members.

7. Tennessee–While the TN Directors of CTE did get their bill passed for additional funding, this year there was no money to fund it. The association’s winter meeting will be in Nashville in February. All students must choose a career path focus for graduation.

8. Virginia–They are currently working on the legislative agenda. Last year, for the third year, its three primary budget amendments were funded–which are great victories for CTE in the state. They are working on legislation to address the shortage of CTE teachers. Their state conference will be January 15-16 in Richmond.

As I said, it was a very informative session, despite the fact that there was no cheesecake.

The next morning, I jump in the shower and remember that I have that bar of soap in my bag. I grab it and proceed to shower. I go to wash my hair and realize that they have not given me any shampoo. Luckily, they had conditioner, so I started my morning, with the best smelling dirty hair of any attendee.

That day I figured when they cleaned the room, they would drop some shampoo. Boy was I wrong, they only left me more conditioner!

This morning, I am happy to report that I had soap and shampoo!

But I digress.

Today, the morning started with a panel presentation that discussed how some states have structured their technical centers/colleges and technical/community colleges. The states represented on the panel were KY, GA, FL, NC. The panelists talked about how the schools are funded, what the admission requirements are, dual enrollment, articulation agreements and more.

According to KY, while they do have some statewide articulation agreements, most of them are at the local level. 

There was a question asked about the partnership between schools and business and industry. In NC, it was shared that the furniture industry worked with the schools to set up programs, train instructors and supported the program. It was an example of business saying, “Here’s what we need” and the school’s having the flexibility to listen and respond.

There was also a question about how CTE programs are using virtual learning. For the most part, there was not a lot of action in this area because of the need for on-site, hands-on lab experiences. An attendee from VA did say that the state was really tinkering around with this idea and trying to develop a way to balance the online learning and simulations, and the lab experience.

Following this presentation was a presentation by yours truly. I was asked to spend a bit of time to talk about marketing ACTE to CTE instructors. Here is my presentation: Pete’s Marketing Presentation. There were a couple of questions about engaging younger members. My answer to this question is to look at how you are structured and what opportunities you are providing members. People are no longer going to join an organization because “it’s the thing to do,” which a number of attendees said that is why they joined.

Today, members want to be involved; they want to provide input; they want to make a difference. The problem is that our state and national organizations tend to have structures and opportunities that require people to know the right people or jump through hoops to participate. If we can eliminate those barriers and give people the opportunities, they will join and participate.

It has been another full morning, but we do have a bit of free time this afternoon.

Chris Wilder, who is the president of FACTE, opened the discussion, which was moderated by Tom Besaw. First up were Angela Chriest and Randy Swift from VyStar Credit Union. VyStar partnered with St. John’s County Schools to open two high school branches, which are aligned with the business and finance academy. “There was a synergy between the school and its board and the credit union,” said Swift. 

The second guest was Bob Coleman from Florida Power and Light. “Name any career and we will probably have a place for them,” he said. Because of a shortage of line operators and the growth in alternative energy careers, FPL needs to partner with schools and CTE programs to make sure they have the workforce to support the company. “We are a customer of the school system,” said Coleman, explaining why the company chose to get involved in the education arena. 

Flagler Life Institute representative Patricia Moore was next and she talked about the need for health care workers in Florida–approximately 10,000 nurses will be needed in Florida in the near future. “Because of this shortage, we are interested in the academy model,” said Moore, who works with Pedro Menendez High School. The program consists of student internships and teacher externships to ensure the highest quality instruction for the students. “One of our goals was to build our future workforce and get out into the community,” said Moore. “This partnership has accomplished that.”

Last on the agenda was Bob Davis of the Hotel Motel Association of Volusia County. He shared his group’s connection to schools, which he said seemed pretty obvious in Florida. His main point was that the hospitality industry employs just about every CTE field, from welders to plumbers to electricians to culinary to management. “If there is an industry in this world, the hospitality industry touches it,” he said. 

The big takeaway from the discussion was from the last question, which was “What do you need from us?” The participants broke it down to four answers:

* Two-way communication–the schools and businesses need to communicate to reach common goals.
* Solution providers–businesses like to solve issues/problems/concerns. If there is one of these, come to business to work on a solution.
* Alignment–the goals of working with the school will be more successful if they are aligned to the strategic priorities or goals of the business.
* Internships–providing these at the school level allow the students to decide if this is their career path. Businesses don’t like turnover and this could be one way to address that.

All in all a great session and they even had cheesecake for dessert. As Alisha said, “I don’t understand when these luncheons don’t have cheesecake.” Needless to say, both of our plates were clean.

Day two at the Region II conference started early and is truly a full day of learning. The day began with Alisha Hyslop from ACTE giving an update on legislative activities. At the start of her presentation, she mentioned that right now the political environment is focused on the financial bailout/economy and the election, so not much is being done on education. She did spend a bit of time on the funding process that has been occurring since February. She also mentioned that ACTE has been reaching out to the presidential candidates but that neither of them have accepted the invitation. What she did mention was that whoever is elected, the CTE community will have a lot of work to do because neither candidate has spoken out much on education or CTE. Alisha then talked about what will be happening in 2009. Those topics included:

• NCLB
• Workforce Investment Act
• Energy Sustainability
• FY2010

If you want to keep up to date on CTE policy activities, check out the ACTE CTE Policy Watch blog. 

In other conference proceedings, Chris Colwell from the Volusia Public Schools gave a presentation on the changing philosophy of education. He joked at the start that this was everyone’s favorite class! Basically Colwell stated that we really need to look at what kids are learning and doing in classrooms and to give them credit and opportunity for what they are doing. If students are engaged by what they are doing in CTE, then they should and will achieve.

Following Colwell’s presentation, Mary Bruno, also from Volusia, gave a presentation on Global CTE. Since we are dealing with a situation about the next issue of Techniques magazine, I was in and out of this session. Luckily Bruno shared her PowerPoint slides with me. Check it out at the bottom of this post.  The long and the short of her presentation was to share what the county was doing in CTE and what gains they have achieved.

Following Bruno was Janice Scholz from Brevard Public Schools. Scholz talked about CTE program evaluations and what Brevard is doing in that area. I managed to snag her presentation also, so you will see it below. In this presentation, Scholz talked about how the county looked at certifying their programs, their teachers and their students. The purposes of this project, as stated by Scholz were:

* Establish clear and rigorous standards
* Ensure students receive a quality education
* Establish and maintain programs that demonstrate high levels of performance
* Development links and foster collaboration
* Improve articulation with postsecondary
* Recognize achievement

Scholz did mention that not all teachers were on board at first, but after they began to see a difference in the other programs and students. She did mention that they have some work to do on some of the achievement measures, but they have gotten big improvements. A lot of what they are doing surrounds the career academy model. For more information on what they are doing and to see some of the materials they use for measurement and evaluation, check out the Brevard CTE Web site.

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! 

I have been doing a little bit of research as I am prone to do before I travel and I found this ABCs of Daytona Beach–at least it’s one person’s perspective on what there is to do down there.

Check out this sunrise video I found:

I am not sure what I will do when I am down there, but at least getting around should be easy:

View Larger Map

I trust my flight down there will be uneventful and I will arrive in time to catch a session or two. I will write more when I arrive.