HOSA!

As all of us in CTE know, we have to incorporate CTSOs into our curriculum. My students are members of Health Occupation Students of America. Each year, we select officers, do fundraisers and attend conferences.

On April 15-17, we attended our HOSA State Leadership Conference here in Indianapolis. I took 24 students and another chaperone to hear inspirational speaking and compete in their field of training. I teach Advanced Life Science: Animals and Veterinary Assisting, so all of my students competed in the Veterinary Science category. Needless to say, we did well when there were only 35 competitors in the entire competition!

We also had 90 other students from various health careers areas that attended from our school. I am not the senior teacher in my department, but I am close, so I took a lead in helping to organize our school participants and their teachers. My main job was to secure 35 rooms, divide the cost according to class by the number of students going, and pick up the room keys prior to our arrival. All went pretty well, except we were missing one rooms keys.

With the help of the training I am getting in the fellowship program, I was able to work well with seven other teachers in getting rooms assigned and organized. Not the easiest job, let me tell you! We came out of the event with 25 students being eligible for Nationals. Now I have to organize that. Back to the notepad and pencil!

Kandy Smitha is an ACTE Fellow from Region II.