The Education Drives America Back-to-School Bus Tour takes Secretary Arne Duncan and senior ED staff coast-to-coast highlighting education successes and engaging communities in conversations about school reform (P-12), college affordability and completion, travel poster hawaii and the link between education and jobs.
Assistant Secretary for Vocational and Adult Education Brenda Dann-Messier recently met with the students, travel poster hawaii staff, and business partners of the Veterans Tribute Career Technical Academy in Las Vegas to discuss career and technical education (CTE) and how it benefits students and the community.
travel poster hawaii Dann-Messier's visit was part of ED's Education Drives America back-to-school bus tour, and one of many stops she made during the tour to discuss the blueprint for transforming career and technical travel poster hawaii education and ways the Department of Education can support CTE education.
Student Marcus Montano travel poster hawaii explained during the visit that he chose to attend Veterans because he wanted a "real-world education and not just standard curriculum." travel poster hawaii The school has two program areas, Law Enforcement Services and Emergency Medical Services, with multiple labs that allow hands-on learning experiences.
The type of CTE taught at Veterans increases motivation for students in all areas of study, as they realize the direct connection between the core curriculum and a career. Student Leah Bories said she felt "limited by not having the right teacher or the right material. I wanted this so bad. I want to learn. I want to succeed."
Assistant Secretary Brenda Dann-Messier talks to a students in the Environmental Horticulture Science program at Desert Rose Adult High School. Official Department of Education photo by Leslie Williams.
Veterans partnership with local employers is the type of community collaboration promoted in ED's CTE blueprint. The community and business partners are also benefiting travel poster hawaii from Veteran's unique career training. Students from Veteran's are turning internships at local businesses into careers upon graduation. Some students have even used their training at Veteran's to become dispatchers for emergency services, which is helping them pay for college. Sgt. Dan Lake of the North Las Vegas Police Department believes the program is future-focused, because "students can begin to build a future as juniors in high school."
Assistant Secretary Dann-Messier also held a roundtable at Desert Rose Adult High School and Career Center, in North Las Vegas, to hear how CTE is being used to help students find success. travel poster hawaii Desert Rose serves a diverse population of students, many of whom have previously dropped out or become credit-deficient.
At Desert Rose, students can learn multiple trades while obtaining high school credit at their own learning pace. This combination travel poster hawaii of CTE and personalized learning has led to many students achieving success.
Senior Elizabeth Gomez said that this personalized focus is helping her succeed in school and getting her ready for a job. "I have a really good resume travel poster hawaii now" she said. The blueprint for transforming CTE calls for accountability for improving outcomes and building technical and employable skills. Desert travel poster hawaii Rose students are already travel poster hawaii realizing the benefits of obtaining travel poster hawaii such skills at a young age.
Some students have already obtained a job through the CTE offered at Desert Rose. After winning numerous awards, including a gold medal from the Skills USA competition, travel poster hawaii and obtaining multiple certifications from Desert Rose high school, student Keith Griffin was able to find a job in Hawaii and is preparing to move his family "from the desert to the tropics," he says.
Aaron Bredenkamp is a 2012 Classroom Teaching Ambassador Fellow who teaches at Westside Career Center, an Alternative High School in Omaha, NE. He joined Assistant Secretary Dann-Messier during her visit to Las Vegas.
For each of the last three years, travel poster hawaii Secretary Duncan has started the school year with a bus tour visiting travel poster hawaii schools and communities across the country to find what's working in education and to hear the concerns, insights, and lessons learned from students, teachers, principals, parents, and the communities supporting them. It's always a welcome grounding in "real education" — the kind that children and families experience everyday — versus the "education system" policymakers and pundits love to caricature and debate.
In California, I watched a Sequoia High School (Redwood City) student, who entered the school as an English Learner, introduce the music video he produced with his classmates on the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus to an audience of more than 500 attendees. Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, then shared anecdotes of individual students, whole classes, and entire schools achieving dramatic gains and fundamentally changing learning and teaching practices.
In Missouri, I visited the New Franklin School to see Investing in Innovation (i3) Validation grantee eMINTS at work. Teachers and students travel poster hawaii were using relevant and engaging project-based and personalized learning powered by technology to improve student engagement, effort, and outcomes. A class of self-directed 5 th -grade teams pursued travel poster hawaii Web quests on American Indian civilizations. High school juniors and seniors travel poster hawaii completed self-paced accounting travel poster hawaii courses. Teachers travel poster hawaii spoke of being renewed by the approach and the new tools. Everyone used words like "ownership," "empowered," and "independence" to describe the shift in the school's learning culture. All of this was especially exciting after hearing from school and system leaders working hard to implement the program despite the challenges of decreased funding, lack of technology infrastructure, and burdensome regulation.
In Kentucky, I visited Sayre School , a high-performing and well-resourced independent school focused on building great character as well as providing rigorous learning opportunities. The students travel poster hawaii showed extraordinary poise and confidence as we discussed the relative strengths of their program and the infusion of technology as a new, but increasingly ubiquitous, tool. This visit served as an excellent benchmark as I traveled to rural Kentucky to visit the i3 Development and Promise Neighborhoods (PN) Implementation grantee travel poster hawaii , Berea College, to see their work at Clay County High School travel poster hawaii (CCHS).
Clay County suffers from all of the ills often associated with Appalachia; but CCHS has leveraged the PN and i3 grants to substantially increase the number travel poster hawaii of AP classes offered and multiply the number of students taking AP classes and, most importantly, passing AP exams with a score of 3 or better. They've used the PN grant to create more comprehensive and coherent student supports that have begun to reverse the dropout trend and increase college going. Teachers and students spoke eloquently about the impact these efforts have had, not only on their practices, but also on their belief systems.
One student in particular helped me synthesize everything that I had seen in the past two weeks. As I was ending my visit at CCHS with a student roundtable, I asked the students what impacts the programs had on the school and them. They spoke about the access to more AP courses, the heroic efforts of the new academic specialists to keep kids in school, the impact of grant-funded college visits, and the difference tiny amounts travel poster hawaii of resources made to teachers who cared but had nothing to work with. Then one standout student I had met earlier in the day, Rex, said:
I know I talked about the AP classes; but that's not the most important thing. And, I know I talked about the resources—ROTC students finally having real equipment after having used brooms for years—but that's not the most important thing. travel poster hawaii CCHS used to be an I-can't-school… travel poster hawaii Now, we are an I-can-school… I can take AP courses. I can go to college. I can do better than my parents.
travel poster hawaii Evidenced-based programs, travel poster hawaii technology, professional development, funding — I firmly believe all these are important; but in the end, nothing is more powerful than schools, teachers, and students that believe they can.
"At that point in my life, I didn't see the value of an education. I just needed to get to farming and to making a living," said Wilkerson, recently named the president of Rend Lake College in Ina, Illinois, site of Special Assistant for Community College Sue Liu's Sept. 19 visit during the Department's back-to-school bus tour .
Wilkerson, right, speaks with Special Assistant for Community Colleges Sue Liu and RLC Applied Science and Advanced Technology Division Chair Chris Nielsen during a Sept. 19 visit to Rend Lake College as part of the Back-to-School Bus Tour. Photo courtesy of Rend Lake College
For the first time, Wilkerson found himself in a room full of people who were really interested in developing a deeper understanding of agriculture, and he realized that he wanted that too. It was a good fit: he went on to earn an associates degree in applied science at RLC; followed by a bachelor's degree in plant and soil science and a master's degree in agronomy, both from nearby Southern Illinois University.
He continued to farm as he pursued his college education, and successfully used knowledge he gained in school to improve his farming practices. Wilkerson soon realized that he wanted to help other farmers and future farmers to also thrive in the changing agricultural industry. He'd stayed in contact with RLC staff members, and soon landed travel poster hawaii a faculty position in the agriculture program.
After teaching for 11 years and then serving 4 years as RLC's chair of the Applied Science and Technology Division, Wilkerson was selected by the college's board to serve as its president, beginning this past July. While he'd never dreamed of achieving travel poster hawaii his current position as a teen, he's found that the same fundamental lessons learned from a lifetime of farming help him in his role as the top executive travel poster hawaii of Rend Lake College.
After more than 100 events in 48 communities in 12 states, the Education Drives America bus tour came to a c
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