High School Graduation Requirements

Career and Technical Education (CTE), in my opinion, has a dual purpose. The first purpose is to provide career exploration. We all know that children grow up with desires for a certain career such as fire fighter, law enforcement, professional athlete, and such. We also know that those aspirations change regularly. Many students in middle school through about tenth grade are unsure of their career aspirations. Even those that think they know often change their minds several times by the time they finish college or trade school. CTE give them the opportunity to learn skills necessary for almost every career choice. Many students who try various CTE courses are better able to match their interests with their abilities through career exploration.

The second purpose of CTE is to provide specific skills to better prepare them for entering the world of work, whether it is right out of high school, a technical or trade school, or a four-year college and beyond. I believe that most CTE programs do an exemplary job of providing skills to students to help them succeed.

The frustration for most CTE instructors, however, comes from the traditional ideal that every student needs to go to college. Statistics show that is not true for all careers in today's world. However, CTE is constantly fighting for adequate funding. In addition, there is constant pressure that any college-bound student has to take all the high level math and science classes. Recently, legislation has increased the graduation requirements for additional math and science classes. Students are being told that they need to take Chemistry, Physics, and Calculus to be successful in college. The fact is that many degree programs and career choices have absolutely no need for these skills. Students are being discouraged from taking CTE classes because they are "college-bound". Often the good students are unable to do career exploration because they cannot find time in their class schedules to take CTE classes. We need to help the students find what career they can most enjoy and be successful at, and then have them take classes that will prepare them for their chosen career.

It was my understanding that one of the driving forces behind highly qualified teachers was to get the most qualified teachers teaching the subjects they are experts in. The Business Education Department for many years taught Business Math. Students earned math credit for graduation by taking this class. This class was designed to provide basic math skills for students who struggled with Algebra and Geometry. They were taught to compute interest, calculate loan repayment, balance checkbooks, and the like. In other words, life skills in math. Most of the students were not college-bound. We had to quit offering the class for math credit because we were not highly qualified in math. When the Math Department took the class over, it quickly became another Pre-Algebra class. The needs of our low-achieving students were forgotten. Now, we are required to teach certain defined personal finance skills. The skills defined by the legislature were among the skills taught in our Business Math. Who is better qualified to teach personal finance than a business teacher? So who is going to teach personal finance? The Social Studies Department. Once again, CTE gets slighted because we are not a core area.

High School Hazing

Homecoming week has hit Mandan High School this week, and the age-old problem of hazing Freshman is in full swing. For some reason, the upper classmen choose this week to step up their efforts at putting Freshman in their place.

Hazing has long been seen as a right of passage. The Seniors use this time to assert their dominance and control of the school. In past years, Juniors also believe it is their right to participate in this ritual. Watching for, and trying to stop hazing, puts a tremendous burden on administration and the teaching staff which often take away the joy of the Homecoming festivities. It also ruins Homecoming Week for those students who get paddled or other abusive treatment.

Years ago, hazing was tolerated as long as it didn't get out of control. When I was a high school Freshman at Havre (Montana) High School, there was an unwritten rule that Seniors chose a Freshman. As a member of the Freshman football team, we were each chosen by a Senior member of the varsity football team. Our hazing consisted of polishing the helmets and cleats of our Senior before each game. Also, every Freshman and Senior was excused from school for one afternoon to paint the H on a local hillside. When a Freshman was hazed by a Senior, it was understood that no one else was supposed to touch that Freshman. When the rules for the painting ritual got out of hand, the administration called in the Senior leadership and told them if they didn't get things under control, hazing would be outlawed. The Seniors got things back in control, and patrolled themselves.

Times have changed, however. Many of the upper classmen let things get out of control, and the other members of the class don't work to get things back under control. I remember an instance after the Homecoming game that appalled me when I found out about it. Some Seniors drove by a group of Freshman and pelted them so hard with eggs that it actually knocked them down. There have also been reports of students being physically injured by over zealous paddling. Society has also become much less tolerant to any form of physical or emotional abuse.

Earlier this week, an announcement was made by the principal that any form of hazing would not be tolerated and would be dealt with severely. I had a Senior in class say, "What's the big deal?" I responded by telling him that the big deal is that it is against the law. He responded by saying it wasn't. I told him that paddling is assault and battery. His response was, "I got paddled when I was a Freshman, so I should be able to paddle Freshmen now that I am a Senior." I replied again that it is a big deal because it is against the law. He wasn't convinced.

Homecoming Week is now coming to an end, and I know that we have to be more aware and observant tomorrow until the ordeal is over. After Homecoming is over, the instances of hazing usually slow down and reports become much less. Unfortunately, until we get over this climate that hazing is just a rite of passage, hazing will continue. We need to find a way to help our youth understand that treating anyone with less respect because they are younger, more immature, or don't have the same physical characteristics as others is unacceptable. Until everyone understands that it is wrong to abuse another in any way, hazing will continue to be a tradition.

A discussion of the Perspectives on Instructional Decision Making

As I read the section of chapter two devoted to the perspectives on instructional decision making, some memories from my undergrad training twenty-five years ago started to stir. I remember being totally confused by how these theories would help me in the day-to-day lessons I would be doing when I entered the classroom. I tried to keep these in mind as I struggled to prepare daily lessons in those early years.

Now, as a seasoned veteran, I see that I use a combination of these perspectives. One of the things experience has taught me is that most educational theory doesn't stand alone, but works hand in hand with other theories. Which perspective is used to make decisions about how to present a lesson, how long to take on a lesson, how to assess, etc. is going to depend alot on the subject you are teaching. It also depends on the students you have in class and the teacher themselves. I have found that often what works for one teacher may not work for another teacher, and may not work for all students.

For many of the classes I teach, direct instruction is the best approach. As I teach accounting, advanced features of Microsoft Office 2007 applications, and beginning Web Design, I find that the majority of my students enter these classes with little or no pre-existing knowledge of the subject. Therefore, it is my job to lead my students into an understanding of the concepts and procedures these subjects require. My instruction begins with an explanation of the new concepts to be learned. I follow with guided instruction where I am showing the students how to do the procedures as they are doing them along with me. When the guided instruction is complete, students are then given a project or two to apply what they have just learned. Assessment is done on the projects they do on their own, with the decision of when to continue depending on how well the students were able to do the projects on their own. With a subject like Accounting, everything builds on previous lessons in a systematic fashion, so often we move on even though there may not be mastery of a lesson. As things build, the vast majority of students will get enough practice that the mastery may develop over time rather than with each individual lesson.

When I teach advanced applications from MS Office, I often use an independent study approach to learning. There are very good tutorial textbooks available, so I let the students learn the various parts of each software at their own pace, with me setting deadlines for each lesson being complete. This way, the students who learn more quickly are not held back by the students who progress more slowly. Often I will provide addional projects for the students doing the best to keep them challenged so they don't become bored.

When I started teaching in the fall of 1989, I felt it was fairly easy to recognize which of Piaget's developmental stages students fell into. The maturity level of students was easily recognizable by the differences between Freshman, Sophomore, Juniors, and Seniors. Often we decided whether students were ready for certain classes based on year in school. Not all students within a grade level shared the same maturity level, but there seemed to be a fairly small gap within the grade level. The last few years, however, the maturity gaps seem to be much larger, and it is often hard to distinguish what grade level a person is at based on their maturity level. So, in recent years, I agree with the book that fewer students are reaching the formal stages during their high school career than we saw in the 1990's.

Is Teaching an Art or a Science

I believe teaching is both an art and a science. A good teacher should be able to exhibit the characteristics of both.

Teaching is a science because a teacher must understand the intricacies of their subject. They must understand the subject well enough that they can explain the same concept in several different ways to reach all students. They must understand the stages of development of adolescents and young adults to help understand their physical, mental, and emotional growth and stages of development. They must also understand the psychology of learning to allow them to better reach their students. They must constantly be studying and learning new techniques and strategies of learning to help them reach all students. Depending on what subject you are teaching, a good teacher must also master the techniques their students must learn to be good in the subject. This includes keeping up with technology as well as new developments in their subject area. This is especially true with Career and Technical teachers. As a business teacher, I have to constantly learning new software applications and learning them well enough not just to teach the students the newest technologies, but also well enough to help students fix problems they may encounter as they learn those same technologies. Computer applications are constantly changing, so people teaching technology are constantly changing with them.

Teaching is also an art. Teachers are constantly having to make decisions about how fast to work through lessons. One of the most difficult decisions a teacher must make is when the students have learned a lesson well enough to move on versus when to reteach a lesson because some students didn't learn it the first time. Teachers must also create their own style. One thing college doesn't prepare new teachers well enough for is classroom management and discipline. I believe this is true because there is no one way that works for everyone. What works as classroom management for one person will not work for someone else. Often the style that works for a teacher is a collection of procedures and philosophies from several different veteran teachers. Once a style is created for an individual, they must continue refining their style as students and society changes. It takes an artist to be able to create your own style and then keep refining it constantly. Good teachers accomplish this, making them true artists.