Meeting with my Fellowship Mentor

My mentor for the 2017 ACTE Fellows program is Shelly Rust, Advanced Culinary Arts and Baking Pastry Instructor at the Kokomo Area Career Center in Kokomo, Indiana. She is a 2014 ACTE Fellow and is currently the Indiana ACTE President.

Like me, Shelly came into the Career Tech arena from the restaurant industry. She has spent 28 years in the restaurant industry, getting her start when she was only 14 years old, and has been teaching Culinary courses for the past 11 years. In that time, her program at Kokomo Area Career Center has grown from 13 students to 146 students.

Her mom has been a big influence in obtaining her dream job of teaching. According to her mother, Shelly began insisting that she wanted to be a teacher when she was only three years old. James Little, with Career Tech, has also been a big influence on her decision to teach.

She belongs to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), and encourages her students and other culinary students to get involved in the association. She is involved with the Indiana Association for Career and Technical Education, and is currently serving as President.

She enjoys reading about Career Technical Education, Restaurant News, and Smart Brief. Staying current on these topics improves her knowledge of the business side of the restaurant industry. Smart Brief covers interview skills, information she passes on to her students.

Shelly loves to see the passion in students’ eyes when they are engaged in the culinary arts. She knows that in some ways, technology is replacing student hands in the industry, which frustrates her.

Though she enjoyed her journey to success, if she were to do it all over again, she believes she could have gained more knowledge, as well as worked harder to teach her students work ethics, an area they are lacking in.

If her job were suddenly eliminated, Shelly knows that she could use her skills anywhere in the hospitality industry. Her managerial skills could bring her success in a variety of industries, particularly in a medical office.

Networking is an important skill that Shelly possesses. She enjoys networking with other culinary teachers around the globe. She seeks them out and observes how they teach different skills in their classroom. She then applies these skills to the students in her classroom at the Career Tech Center.

She feels students in Career Tech are lucky because they have different educational options in today’s environment. Before Career and Technical Education, she saw that students weren’t taught any life skills to apply to their daily lives.

Making sure that government recognizes the importance of Career and Technical Education in student’s lives is a challenge we need to address. Giving up on just one student cannot be an option when they have skills to invest.

The main challenge Shelly faces today is reaching her leadership goals and challenging herself to change up the culinary curriculum that she teaches. She is always challenging herself to teach in a different and better way to reach all students.

“The Association of Career and Technical Education offers a lot of professional development to make myself better and improve my impact that I have on my students,” said Shelly. “My thoughts on attending the National Policy Seminar is to apply ourselves and keep the students in the forefront of all our conversations.”

 

Ernie Gomez
OK PACE Division
Moore Norman Technology Center
Oklahoma City, OK