Blogs
Cyber Security in CTE
Have you ever thought about a topic that you truly felt needed to be a CTE program of study? If you have, what steps have you taken in order to make it happen? What topic was it?
At the end of the 2014-2015 school year, I was introduced to a Cyber security competition that I chose to introduce ...
Start With Why
In his book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Simon Sinek presents the idea that great leaders inspire others by starting everything with the question why. He uses dozens of examples of great leaders who have a clear sense of why. Sinek points out how these leader...
Career Development in a Virtual Landscape
One of the main goals of Career & Technical Education at the high school level is to prepare students for career success. To that end, the CTE Department of Durham Public Schools defined its mission as to get all students “Future Ready” (#futureready). During a COVID closure of schools i...
Law Enforcement Class in a Rural Context – Culture and the Military
Before I dive into culture, I do want to focus on the involvement with our local military recruiters. From the beginning, I wanted to have a class where the local recruiters could speak frankly with students who were interested in the military. In our environment, a JROTC program probably wouldn’t...
Fostering Creativity in Career and Technical Education
To foster an environment of creativity and learning, it is important to start by forming meaningful and supportive relationships with students and the teams we work with on a daily basis. When you ask people to reflect on their most profound moment of discovery or learning, their responses include a...
The Silver Lining of a COVID-19 Learning Environment
There is no question this has been a school year filled with challenges we never thought we would have to deal with in our careers in education. CTE is so much different from academic classes where a textbook may be the only piece of equipment students need to successfully complete the course. CTE i...
Building my Own Fellowship
Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to participate in a number of leadership experiences, cohorts, and fellows’ programs. Each one provided me with a diverse community to connect with, and unique perspective from that organization. As I entered the ACTE New Fellows program, I refle...
When Life Seems Out of Control
As CTE educators, whether your area of responsibility is within a classroom, or at an administrator level, this past year has definitely been a challenge. Along with the changes this year has brought, there have been periods, that I believe we could all admit, which seem as though we have lost cont...
Work-Based Learning During Hybrid Instruction
Consolidated High School District (CHSD) 230 had challenges like many school districts had in Illinois that were either developing or already offering strong work-based learning opportunities for its students. CHSD 230 hadn’t even had one complete year of their new initiative called D230 Works w...
Postsecondary Success
When I was in high school, I was told that successful career paths were either by going to college, or… really, just by going to college. Sure I had a friend with a military appointment, and a few others who were going into the service, but the options were pretty much college, or.... When I sta...