Get Your Students Hired
Employability and Standard One generally can connect directly to our work in so many ways. Planning for Lessons and for Vertical Integration, Standards/Competencies, and Industry standards is super important.
As a new instructor, I came in having to create quite a bit of my curriculum as I went. We had to move to a two year degree, I started with a very advanced class who were at the tail end of the bachelors students. Since then, I've had to adjust my curriculum significantly to meet the needs of the new two year students. Toss COVID into the mix and it's been a wild first two years teaching!
I've defintely seen the benefits of curriculum alignment first hand. I have and continue to look for ways to make our program's vertical alignment smoother for incoming students and more specific for students working through the program.
It's important to have a plan and make sure that everything alingns with the outcomes that you want.
Having a plan is important to the classroom environment to pace the class time and a guide to what will be discussed that day. unit, timeframe.
The most important part to teach is planning, but not always, sometimes you have to be able to change your methods.
Material can be Aligned in a variety of ways, which allows students multiple ways to demonstrate their knowledge and progress Academically and towards their career goals.
I agree alot about what is being communicated here about goals, objectives, planning so we can calculate what goals and objectives need to be met along the way. That may be one of the hardest things for some teachers to comprehend for the sake of the student and their learning goals. I think having a good plan in place before the week, month, and/or year starts is a great way to keep and hold teachers accountable for what is being taught on a daily, weekly and yearly basis.
Being the only person in my district that teaches what I do, I really took to heart the vertical and horizontal alignment of the material. I need to reach out to other districts to see what they are doing and how my students will measure up to fellow peers.
I've learned that the Bloom's taxonomy of my college years has evovlved and changed and I need to also consider psychomotor objectives much more intently. Also, a CTE teacher has an obligation to teach students soft skills and align objectives across industry and state. As a result, I need to devote more classtime to developing such skills. Side note: these rubrics and assessments are awesome.
I'm grateful that our curriculum is separated by lecture and labs. this gives me a great way to separate the cognitive and the hands on portions of learning. they can be introduced to new tools in lecture and then putting them to use in the labs. Also I like the idea of scoring soft skills and employability. the rubrics for this are interesting. I have to find a way to incorporate this. I have told my students many times, If an employer calls me their first two questions are. Will they show up and on time? they never ask how their grades are!!
Karen Sharber
I have learned what I have known all along is that students need to be motivated. They need to be accountable and involved in making their own goals. I can't do it for them. They have to want it for themselves. As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him or her drink! I can be very motivated as the instructor but until the student wants to get involved and care, nothing really happens.
In addition, I will utilize the importance of having students inform me of their goal or goals for the semester. So, that we can work together to accomplish those goals!
It is important to ensure your curriculum aligns with what your competencies are with accrediation, as well as what the college expects. In addition, I think students need to own the curriculum and understand the madness behind it. At times, I feel my students are just going with the flow and really do not understand why they do what they do or why I make them do something. I also want to incorporate appropriate behaviors that will allow them to be good employees. I teach a dual-credit class right now that we focus a lot on soft skills. I like to incorporate this into other classes. As a new Instructor (1 year) and a new Program Coordinator, I sometimes feel lost on what I need to ensure my students are learning. I am hoping that I walk-away with goals that will allow me to be a better Instructor and make sure my students are succesful.
In my program, we have a course dedicated to Professional Development and Protocol, which includes lots of soft skills/employability skills. The idea of finding ways to incorporate those skills throughout any course is one that is interesting to me and could be valuable to my students.
I tend to find myself focusing on reminding my students of some of the expectations that they may encounter once they are out in a job scenario. Listening through this section, I was drawn to the point that some students may have never been exposed or taught about how to behave in a classroom setting, much less a job! I'm going to keep this in mind and change my thought process a bit from "reminding" to "informing/teaching" when it comes to these principles.
What I gathered from this first module are that course standards and objectives should promote personalized goals to encourage creative thinking and problem solving. With the information both vertically and horizontally aligned, students will not run the risk of repetitive information, but engage in the advancement of that knowledge. I've always tried to incorporate professional / workplace discussions and experiences into my art courses by inviting those professionals into the classroom. Students have positively responded with those interactions. It was also great to hear about Bloom's taxonomy.
Having resources like Bloom's taxonomy, helps me ensure that my lesson plans are building on one another and progressing the students to higher levels of learning.
I do think it is important to always have a plan and be prepared. If I don't feel prepared then I can not demonstrate it with confidence. But I feel I need to keep in mind everyone has different learning styles.