Get Your Students Hired
This is a general discussion forum for the following learning topic:
Learning Through Student Based Enterprises --> Sustainability
Post what you've learned about this topic and how you intend to apply it. Feel free to post questions and comments too.
Sustainability and regenerative agriculture are important facets of our program. CTE should emphasis sustainable practices so students can enter the industry with tools that will make them profitable.
Industry Advisory Boards and Student Advisory Councils can prove to be influential regarding sustainability as they promote buy in and and generate massive action towards program building.
I have learned how the advisory council can contribute to the CTE program. The SBE can be the foundation for the CTE program. The skills and experience that the SBE can offer students is invaluable.
Sustainability in my welding program would take the effort of all stakeholders. I like the idea of a SBE for my program. I have tried fund raisers where we made items to be sold, but in the end we broke even. Steel prices are expensive and continue to rise. It's very hard to predict and control for.
Sustainability is a bit of a problem in my class. We receive no school funding and are self-sustaining. This just means that I sometimes feel like I have a second job of running a business on top of teaching. While it is easy to say that we need to let students take over the business, when the class depends on the SBE, it is important to be responsible with the money and try to make smart decisions so we grow the money instead of lose it.
I learned more about the importance of advisory councils. I know they are very helpful but it is something I struggled with early in my career. Another thing I learned was the different ways for multiple CTE programs to collaborate. I also really liked the idea of having the SBE students present to the school board as I see many different benefits in that idea.
Advisory councils made up of community members and other stakeholders are key to making connections with others and for collaborating on SBE programs. The learning from this module can be applied in various ways. One ways is adjusting to change and be adaptable to that to better SBE programs in a school. Change is bound to happen. Another way is working on building partnerships with key stakeholders. Lastly, this information can be applied to core classes in schools. Encouraging core teachers (math for example) to partner with construction or culinary classes to help students understand the "why" behind certain math skills that they can use in real world.