By Susan Reese, Techniques
Contributing EditorPatricia Beltram
In her first year of full-time teaching at the secondary level, Patricia Beltram was also going full time to the University of Northern Arizona for her teaching certification and to Prescott College for business certification. Because she was coming to education from a business background that included seven years of finance experience and one year of marketing and public relations, Beltram says she didn’t realize that everyone’s first year of teaching wasn’t like that; she was just getting the job done.
Beltram came to Mesquite High School (MHS) in Gilbert, Ariz., in 1999, one year after the school opened. The second year at MHS, she assumed the department chair position, and today the department has grown to eight teachers. While she credits much of that growth to a computer proficiency credit requirement instituted by the school board, many of her colleagues credit Beltram for bringing innovative business and marketing classes to the school. According to the MHS registrar, more than 90 percent of the student body is or was enrolled in the Business/Marketing Department before graduation.
Some students even come to MHS from outside of the Gilbert boundaries because of the courses offered at the school, but Beltram is quick to spread the credit around. “The school has a great reputation because we have a faculty who cares,” she says, “and the students succeed because they’re allowed to pursue their interests.”
The required basic computer class may get them started, but after that many students go on to take advanced classes in marketing, accounting, A+, N+, entrepreneurship and financial services. The fully integrated business curriculum Beltram developed has become a model for teachers in her state, according to Arizona Business Education State Supervisor Dr. Janet Gandy.
In the 2000-2001 school year, Beltram began a cooperative education program at her school that includes a marketing internship co-op and a business internship co-op. The students complete a minimum of 15 hours per week of work study in addition to classroom work. If a student does not already have a position, Beltram has more than 100 options for them to choose from, which include sources such as the Arizona Cooperative Education Association or the Gilbert Youth Employment Service. Recently, the MHS Financial Services Advisory Council has also begun providing internship positions for her students.
“But,” says Beltram, “I tell them, ‘I don’t want you just flipping burgers. I want you to find a position related to the career you want.’”
Sometimes a student finds out that a career is actually one she doesn’t want, as in the case of one of Beltram’s students who thought she wanted to be a photographer until she tried it. She then thought she wanted to be a pharmacist, and that turned out to be the right choice. After beginning as a pharmacist’s assistant, the young woman is now pursuing her studies at the University of Arizona.
“She’s ahead now because she started in high school,” notes Beltram.
Beltram believes strongly in the power of career and technical education and states with conviction, “I have all my faith in CTE teachers because they’re the ones who motivate all students—from those who are almost going to drop out to the excelling student.”
One of her students got a perfect score on the SAT and yet says that Beltram’s class was the first one he had taken with something that actually related to his career.
“We touch all students,” she says.
Her belief in her students is something Beltram did not always receive in her own high school experience. She recalls the counselor who told her mother, “Because Patti has been in FBLA and has taken all these ‘vocational classes,’ and since you’re a divorcée, she shouldn’t even bother applying for college.”
The shouting of her outraged mother even brought the principal to investigate. That counselor has received a copy of every diploma Beltram has earned, courtesy of her mother. He will soon be receiving a copy of her doctorate.
Beltram believes that the stigma of vocational education as only helping potential dropouts “has been shattered by the innovative CTE laboratories of today that help all students.”
In support of that statement, one of her former students who will soon graduate from the University of Arizona College of Law says that, if she were asked to name the five most influential people in her life, Beltram would be on that list.
“CTE worked for me,” says Beltram, “and it can work for my students as well.”
Beltram’s dedication to her profession has resulted in her active participation in ACTE and Arizona ACTE because she believes in the importance for CTE teachers to share with one another, whether it is lesson plans or moral support.
“Being CTE teachers, we’re not just teaching,” she explains. “There is always something going on, like CTSO [career and technical student organization] activities, community service and competitions.”
She then adds, “I like helping new teachers any way I can. My main drive is to help teachers so that they can help their students. Everything is for our students’ success!”
Her dedication to her students, to future career and technical teachers and to the profession as a whole all contributed to making Patricia Beltram the 2005 ACTE Teacher of the Year.
Karen Jones
Although she now teaches in the College of Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, Karen Jones actually began her career as a teacher of family and consumer sciences at the high school level. The high school where she taught had all of the programs for students with disabilities, and meeting the needs of those students struck a special chord with Jones.
However, she says that, as a new teacher dealing with special needs students, she felt that, “My heart was in the right place, but my head knew nothing.”
That’s why she went back to school and added a doctorate in special needs to her undergraduate degree and master’s degree in family and consumer sciences.
The transition seemed a natural one. As Jones points out, “In family and consumer sciences there is also a lot about human development and about training kids to become independent. When I started taking special education classes, I found they were also about teaching kids to become autonomous and independent.”
What she had learned about child and family development in family and consumer sciences, “merged beautifully with what special educators were teaching.”
Today, she is teaching preservice career and technical educators—both undergraduate and graduate—and the theme of her teaching centers on improving the education of special populations and at-risk students.
Jones says of career and technical education, “I know we can teach these kids things that nobody else can.”
It might take a former family and consumer sciences teacher to come up with her comparison of career and technical education to Emeril Lagasse. But as Jones explains, Lagasse does the same things other chefs do and uses the same herbs and spices. But he mixes them into something he calls “essence” and then “kicks it up a notch.”
As Jones points out, “Suddenly the food doesn’t just seem more exciting; it is more exciting.”
She then adds, “Career and technical educators take the same teaching strategies and concepts, then mix up our own essence of teaching and kick it up a notch.”
Then, as Lagasse would say, “Bam!” Suddenly the students understand academic concepts they didn’t understand before.
Believing as strongly as she does in the power of career and technical education, Jones has integrated her teaching and research with a focus on career tech educators who work with special populations, and one of the things she is most proud of is her securing of grants to help her prepare career and technical teachers and paraeducators to work with such students. The grants have helped pay a portion of the cost of tuition for many students.
“The exciting thing for me, as I look back over 20 years, is that I have lost track of the number of students who have received financial support through the grants,” says Jones.
The benefits of her work are not limited to her home state, since her graduates have taken jobs across the nation. As part of her grants, Jones has also produced seven teleconferences that reached more than 14,000 participants in 37 states, Canada, Samoa and Guam.
Her reach may be global, but her focus remains on the individual. Jones believes that a special needs student is much like any other student, but simply requires a little more attention. Her goal is the same for all students—that they become responsible, socially competent, employable adults.
For the aspiring career and technical educators in her classroom, Jones offers this advice:
“Our instruction to students can be imperfect, but our intentions toward our students must be impeccable. It’s okay if we make mistakes in our instruction as long as we go back and correct them. We can never go back and correct it if we do not have the purest intentions.”
She recently heard from a former student, who at the time Jones had been her teacher had been a very troubled girl. This now successful woman told her former teacher, “You were the only female adult who had faith in me.”
Ironically, Jones was only 23 at the time, a mere six years older than her student.
What better example could there be of the one thing that Jones tells all of her students, which is, “Time spent with youth is never wasted. You can’t look for immediate rewards when working with kids at risk, but the time you spend with them now will be relevant to them later.”
Thanks to the efforts of Karen Jones, new career and technical education teachers are taking their places in the classroom to carry on that philosophy.
Debbie Moore
This may be only her sixth year of teaching, but Debbie Moore has already amassed an astounding list of accomplishments. Moore teaches marketing education at Sunrise Mountain High School in Glendale, Arizona, where she helped found the marketing program and was the first to teach the advanced marketing course.
Since it began, the marketing program has grown from a mere eight students to one that currently enrolls more than 250. Moore, who remembers the career and technical student organization DECA from her own high school days, established a DECA chapter at Sunrise Mountain High and also began the first student-run store on campus.
DECA is the career and technical student organization (CTSO) for marketing students, so that was a natural fit for Moore, but she didn’t stop there. She also helped the school establish its first Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) and SkillsUSA chapters.
Moore notes that the FCCLA activities were a good mix with the hospitality and restaurant side of marketing, which also went well with the Academy of Travel and Tourism. Yes, she also helped the school add an Academy of Travel and Tourism. Although she still works with the FCCLA and SkillsUSA chapters, other teachers are now heading them, but Moore still sponsors the Sports Marketing Ambassadors and the Hospitality Club. She also coaches both girls and boys in volleyball and track.
Before coming to the teaching profession, Moore owned her own marketing company. In fact, she still has the business and still does work for a couple of clients, especially in the summer months.
“It’s nice to have your foot in the industry,” says Moore, who also likes being able to put her students in touch with those who can give them a taste of the real-world workplace. She has brought industry experts into the classroom to speak to her students and has engaged those experts as mentors for job shadowing opportunities.
Moore made the decision to transition to teaching after her second child was born and is enjoying it as much as she does her marketing career. In fact, she describes it as “a blast.”
“I love teaching,” she comments. “The kids are so funny and so creative.”
Moore is appreciative of career and technical education and the way students learn not just a theory but how to apply it.
“The hands-on learning is the best thing in the world,” she says, “and it’s really nice to see the level of quality these kids can produce.”
Moore also appreciates all the great teachers that she gets to work with who have shared their ideas and their resources.
“My district has such a great marketing team, and we all share ideas. They are so helpful and insightful,” she comments. “And there are teachers outside my content area who have really helped me to look at all sides of issues and helped me find better ways to connect CTE and academics together.”
Moore has even written project-based learning units that include integration of the programs she teaches, sponsors and coaches, as well as her community.
One of her colleagues describes her as “an outstanding young teacher,” and notes that, “She brings passion and industry experience to the classroom.”
With her involvement in her professional associations, her coaching and her teaching, as well as her work as an adviser in the CTSOs at her school, Debbie Moore brings an incredible amount of energy and commitment to her school.
She is just the kind of outstanding new career and technical teacher who can make a difference in the lives of her students today and in the future.
Sharon Kosek
For Sharon Kosek, participation in both business and community service started very early in life. At age nine, she had her first job—stuffing envelopes for a mental health association for a salary of 50 cents a weekend. By age 12, she was working in a flower shop, where she became office manager and designer at 15 years old.
Today, Kosek is the business coordinator and administrative office systems instructor at the Hillyard Technical Center in St. Joseph, Missouri. She has been teaching career and technical education in the St. Joseph School District for 23 years. Although she previously taught at the high school level, Kosek now teaches adult students, and her current class ranges in age from 19 to 63.
Almost all of her students this year have become unemployed due to plant closings in the area, and Kosek notes that, when most of them came into her class, they had not even had time to go through the grieving process that takes place after the loss of a job of many years. She helps them through that process while teaching them skills they will need to find new employment, but those are not the only lessons they learn in her class. Community service is also a major part of what Kosek teaches at Hillyard.
“We have a very active Phi Beta Lambda organization,” says Kosek. Phi Beta Lambda (PBL) is the business student organization for adults, and Kosek’s students have worked together with officers of other career and technical student organizations such as SkillsUSA and National FFA on projects such as raising cash and food donations for their local America’s Second Harvest Food Bank.
When the teacher who served on the board for the local food bank retired, he asked Kosek to take over because he wanted someone who was as active and passionate as he was. Kosek had already worked on previous food drives and has been a volunteer at the local food kitchen for the entire time it had been open—around 20 years. Clearly, he made the right choice, since, through the efforts of Kosek and her students, the school has donated record amounts to the food bank. Her students also stuffed and hand addressed around 800 to 1,000 envelopes each for the food bank’s annual fundraiser.
Kosek’s students have also participated in the Easter Basket program, in which people donate money to provide food for families in need, and in the Truckloads of Hope campaign. They have collected supplies for victims of the Florida hurricanes and helped organize thousands of books for the public library’s annual book sale.
Another project that the PBL chapter has helped host is the annual schoolwide Community Blood Center Drive, in which they recruit donors by placing posters around the school and visiting classrooms to give brief speeches. They also provide juice and doughnuts for the event, which they purchase with their own funds.
The recent death of a student in a car accident has inspired a new project for the students. They are preparing to do organ donor signups.
When they heard about the student who died, some of her students wanted to take on this project, notes Kosek, because of events that had happened in their own lives.
“One was touched because her husband died in a car accident when he was in his 20s,” she explains. “Another student’s brother had recently received a heart transplant.”
When Kosek says, “You can share so much and give so much to someone else,” she is referring to giving the gift of life through organ donations, but also to giving through community service.
In her life and in her career, that’s what she has done—and continues to do. The work ethic she established at the age of nine is still a part of who she is today. In addition to PBL, she is active in ACTE, Missouri ACTE, the National Business Education Association, the Cotillion for Achievement and the St. Joseph PTA. She is also on the local preservation and restoration board and has a passion and commitment to the arts.
She is an inspiration to her students as well as her colleagues, one of whom says, “Ms. Kosek is one of the most committed, generous and energetic individuals I have ever met. Her willingness to sacrifice her time and talents for the benefit of others is beyond extraordinary.”
Because of her extraordinary efforts in endowing her students with both workplace skills and compassion for others, Sharon Kosek has been recognized as the 2005 ACTE Outstanding Teacher in Community Service.
- Techniques May 2005 Issue - 
