Ohio Association for Career and Technical Education Executive Director Interview

I had the opportunity to meet with Ohio’s ACTE Executive Director this week, Christine Gardner.  Christine shared a lot of initiatives that Ohio ACTE will be focusing on this year.  The first focus is advocacy.  This advocacy will be done on a state and federal level.  State advocacy includes items like changes in teacher licensure, chronic student absenteeism, and the cosmetology bill.  On a federal level, they will be working with Senator Portman on items like STEM and CTE. 

The second focus for the organization this year is professional development.  Ohio ACTE hosts many career specific professional development workshops for teachers and administrators throughout the year called the Success Series.  The Success Series has had a great following in past years, because teachers and administrators are looking for very focused career-tech training for their career fields.  Welding teachers can attend a workshop with other welding teachers throughout the state which also provides great networking and a focus on specific program content.  Along with this specialized content, Ohio ACTE will also put an emphasis on leadership for career-tech professionals across the state.  Just this week, I had the opportunity to attend Ohio ACTE’s Leadership and Empowerment Meeting which brought together career-tech leaders from across the state which was a great event.

The third focus will be on information and how to continue to supply all the important career-tech content and information to Ohio’s ACTE Members.  Ohio ACTE does a great job with this through its newsletter and online resources.  They will be looking at how they continue to provide and expand this information across the state in the coming year. 

The new initiative that Ohio ACTE will be focusing on this year is connections with business and industry.  During the Leadership and Empowerment Meeting this past week, a panel of business and industry executives had the chance to share their ideas and collaborate with state career-tech leaders.  Their ideas and input is invaluable to the work we do every day, and Ohio ACTE will build on this concept in the coming year. 

I’m excited to be a part of Ohio’s ACTE initiatives and programming in the coming year.  All four of these initiatives including advocacy, professional development, providing information to members, and connections to business and industry align well to what the state is doing to move CTE forward.  Ohio ACTE is an invaluable resource for career-tech teachers and administrators statewide, and I was so excited to learn about all of the things they will be doing in the coming year.  Thanks to Christine and her team for hosting me this past week.  It was a great opportunity!