Student Engagement Through CTE — Part Two

0:02 Hello and welcome back to another episode of A Road to an Effective Classroom Environment. I am your host, Dr. Lashonta. And as promised, I'm back before you within the week for part two of CTE: How Students Remain Engaged. And before we jump into this, just want to give a shout out to those who listened to the last episode. I don't know the names of the individuals, but I at least wanted to shout out the areas of the country and in the world where you are. There were uh supporters in Nova Scotia, New York, Frankfurt.

0:40 So I had listeners in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Germany. So thank you once again for your support. Thank you for listening to this last episode. And continue to listen. If you're new to this podcast, please go back and listen to the first uh the first episodes from six years ago. And as I said, I want to come before you a little bit more regularly because there's so much to share in education and so many different areas, and all of it still leads back to how we can be effective in the classroom.

1:17 So again, thank you again to those supporters, and just a reminder that you can sign up for a subscription for as little as$3 a month. And what that$3 a month will do is it goes back to those educators, to those classroom teachers, to those uh administrative assistants, people in education. I want to be able to give back in the way of just sending them tokens of appreciation through gift cards and items that they may need for their classrooms or offices. So if you would like to subscribe to this podcast, please do so.

1:53 You can do as little as$3 a month. So thank you for that. So let's go ahead and jump into this. And I want to just do a brief overview because, of course, I would like you to go back to the first um part one of the episode to listen to it. But just briefly, I want to summarize some of the things that we did talk about and discuss on this road to an effective classroom environment and looking at CTE, how students remain engaged. We talked a little bit about the history of CTE and vocational training.

2:29 We also talked about the benefits of CTE to students, and we also did dive into some instructional strategies that could be used in order to keep that student engaged in that classroom or beyond. So, what we're going to do today in part two, I want to go into the engagement piece just a little bit more and talk about what engagement looks like at in the classroom setting, and then what it looks like in the lab or the shop setting. So the field experience setting, as we could say. And uh, so we're gonna that's gonna be our main focus, and so let's go into it.

3:18 Much of what I want to talk about, you can it can apply to the traditional classroom as well, but there will be some some little specifics that may apply more so to CTE, but as always, the creative teacher, um, the creative educator, anything that you hear from a specific um episode where we may talk be gearing towards whether it be classroom teachers, counselors, administrators, just know that there is something in here for everyone. So, in looking at that classroom setting for CTE, always make sure that you have clear expectations and consequences for your students.

4:03 Now, this is something that we have talked about in other episodes for the traditional setting as well, because our students do not come to us already knowing how to react to us and how we should how we should be with with you in that classroom. And so you have to have clear expectations. You must know, and you must let the students know if you want them to be able to freely get up and get the materials that they need, or if you want to have someone that that will gather materials for the table, or if the materials are already going to be there.

4:47 Also, students need to know how you're going to handle disruptive behavior in the classroom. So those consequences are important. The students need to know that there are consistent consequences, and that there the consequences are fair and go along with what the expectations are at the school level, and that there's no conflict there, as well as what your district expectations are. So, similar, similar um, ideas here for the traditional classroom that also applies for CTE. Your students must know how they are expected to behave in that class, um, even down to materials and getting up and down, going to the restroom.

5:39 What is the expectation? What is the school expectation? Should students have passes? Um, are they going to um be allowed? Are they going two at a time, three at a time, or is it one at a time? So have clear expectations, clear consequences in that classroom setting. That will definitely help you to have an effective classroom environment. Next, when you're talking about the content, so just as in a traditional setting, in a CTE setting, you don't want to have too much direct instruction that's going on.

6:14 And depending on how long your class periods or blocks are for your high school students, um, this is important as well. 30 minutes is a sufficient time to give that direct instruction in which you're providing content knowledge, sharing examples, as well as going over terminology that is specific for that particular career that the student will be engaged in. So make sure that the content that you don't spend too much time with the direct instruction so that it does allow you ample time for other assignments during that time period, whether it is um, which will be my next uh topic that I'll go into collaborative um assignments or being able to get into the lab or shop areas.

7:12 So, content, make sure that you are specific in what you are stating to them. Make sure that as you're presenting that information, even your inflections and your voice, you don't want to be monotone, you don't want to be too excited that the students are more focused on your excitement and not in what you're saying. So you have to you have to know your students, but you also want to put some of your personality into your delivery as well. The next piece I want to talk about as it applies to the classroom setting is collaborative assignments.

7:56 Now, collaborative assignments are also an instructional strategy that is used in the traditional setting, and how the collaborative assignments in CTE can be used is through transferring that knowledge into that lab or shop setting. So, for instance, let's say that you have students who are in an auto or diesel class in which they are studying about the engine parts of the engine in that car or in that that truck, and you pair the students up in the lab setting, in which you have one person who may um who is watching the other student as that student is is actually doing the work under the hood and may have a checklist.

8:51 But all of that goes back to those assignments working together in the classroom. Students need to know how to work together in that classroom setting in order to apply that into that lab setting. So making sure that you have have those assignments in which it may not be longer than 15 or 20 minutes, but giving them enough time to work on the content that you've covered and having them to model what they will do in the lab by doing it in the classroom before they actually do the hands-on. So collaborative assignments can be used to transfer that classroom knowledge, that content, into that lab setting.

9:37 Also, every state, every state in the US and um and I'm sure in other countries in which you may have um CTE as a option, as an option for your students, there are standards that are in place that must be taught or standards for each of those courses. And here in South Carolina, you have priority standards in which these are those those key standards in which students must be taught in order to go on to the next and to be ready for the next level, and then you have those support standards that can be embedded within those lessons of the priority standards, um, but are not necessarily needed to go on to the next level.

10:34 But priority standards in South Carolina, you have those set, and um there are supporting standards as well. So you want to make sure that as that CTE teacher, that you know what the standards are, it's more than just placing them on a wall for your students to see or for administration to see, but you yourself need to make sure that you've covered each of those priority standards or those standards in your state that every student in that particular course will need in order to go on to the next level.

11:15 And one way of making sure that you stay on top of that is um going to your State Department's website and looking over to see if anything has changed. Usually there are meetings that are held, you receive emails, whether it's from your CTE director and also from the State Department saying which standards have had some changes. Hopefully, your district is keeping you up to speed on any changes within any of the courses, career clusters, so that you can be an effective teacher. So making sure you stay on on top of what standards are being or have been added on, or what's been taken out, because sometimes there are pieces from standards that are taken out.

12:05 You need to know this so that you can help your students to be successful to transition it onto the next level. So that those are just some things that I wanted to talk about for being effective at in the classroom. Now, in looking at that lab or shop setting, we're wanting to make sure that the content has transferred over, and somewhere within your discussions, you are also teaching those employability skills that students will need in order to be successful. And sometimes these are things that are not necessarily in the book or are part of the content.

12:51 Um, hopefully, these are some things that have come into play in your state as far as looking at these employability skills, um, how a person, the characteristics of a uh of a healthcare worker, um, what are some of those characteristics? Those characteristics are employability skills because you want someone who's caring, um, observant. Um, and and sometimes these are more human, human nature skills, that we as we would like to call them. Um, and so those are skills that we will see in that lab and shop setting, which will help us to know whether or not our students are um ready to go on to that next level.

13:40 So, in that lab and shop setting, you want to again make sure you have expectations and consequences that are clear, just as in the classroom. Now, these expectations and consequences may look a little differently because once you go into the lab and the shop settings, you are dealing with um heavy machinery, you may be dealing with heavy machinery tools, um, you may be dealing with uh needles, um flat irons that produce that can um be very, very hot. Um barber, uh barbering, you have clippers, so you have where safety is important.

14:20 So making sure that students understand that safety is important when it comes to going into that lab or shop setting, make sure that you have um assessed your students on that, make sure that they have passed their assessments when it comes down to safety, because if the students haven't learned learned safety and they are not showing that they can be trusted or that they're gonna follow through with what needs to be done in that type of setting, then maybe this is not the career for him or her.

14:59 So stressing expectations, having those clear-cut consequences as it pertains to being safe in the lab and the shop areas. Also, what does setup look like in that setting? What does setup and cleanup look like? Because this is a part of the student's training, is setting up, cleaning up, the breakdown. This doesn't fall all on the teacher, these are concepts that are also embedded within that shop and lab setting. So make sure that students understand that this is not just you're cleaning up just to clean up for the next class, or you're setting this up because this is um what you have to do.

15:51 This is essential. Cleanup and setup are essential in that lab and shop setting because it does extend into the real world, it extends into the jobs and the careers that the students want. So they need to know how it's done the right way, whether they're doing setup and cleanup in their own job, or they have people who are working under them, that they, as the um supervisors, the students, if they are supervisors, they need to know what setup and cleanup looks like because all of this goes back to what safety as well.

16:36 And then as we talked about before, when we were looking at the classroom setting and um engagement, we talked about the collaborative assignments. So when you have partners or when you have students working in triads or trios, you have where well one or two students may be doing the work, and then the other student is more like an accountability partner, and making sure that the content knowledge that he or she has learned in the classroom along with the other one or two students, that that content knowledge is has transferred, and so that accountability partner is able to see whether or not his or her partners are doing exactly what they should do.

17:35 So this is a great time for students to coach each other, just as the teacher will walk around and facilitate the learning that is taking place. The teacher has that content knowledge and is checking to see whether or not the students have had a transference of that information into that lab or shop setting. But when they're working in those collaborative partnerships or triads, this allows students to also hold each other accountable because they've learned the content and now they're looking out for each other and making sure that all of them are successful and all of them know what is going on and what should be done correctly, and that they can also check each other to know that they are doing that particular assignment correctly.

18:33 And so those are just some of the things I wanted to come come back and share with you is just to go into a little bit more detail and looking at what engagement looks like in that classroom setting and what engagement looks like in that lab and shop setting with those CTE students. So I hope you found something in this episode that is beneficial to you. As I said, share it with a friend in education. If you found anything to be helpful to you, please pass this along. Want to come before you again sometime next week, and as promised, there'll be an episode for counselors.

19:18 But as always, there's always some nugget of information that you can find in each and every episode that can apply to any educator and maybe just to any person in general. So we are going to sign off at this time. I hope you enjoyed part two of CTE how students remain engaged. I am your host, Dr. Lashanta, and until I see you next time, bye bye.