This week I attended the Supervising Teacher Institute in
Sacramento. We spent a significant portion of our time discussing how we can
best support student teachers and new agriculture teachers. We also talked
about our “AgEd family” often and the support that we provide each other to
make sure that we are not just being successful as individuals but as an entire
profession. On the second day we were fortunate to visit the State Capitol and
meet with our assembly members and senators (or their staffers). Our first
meeting was with Mike McGuire’s Senior Legislative Aide. She was great and one
of the comments I made, was that “it’s so nice to not have to convince Mike
about importance of agriculture education, because he is a product of it”. He
gets it, he loves it, he rallies for it, because it is part of who he is. We
then got a special extra meeting with James Gallagher (way to go Heidi!). I
again thanked him for not having to convince him of the importance of
agriculture education—he too is a product of the 3 ring model. James was great
to talk with and he asked questions about CTE and how we can make sure we have
a workforce ready to do the jobs that we as a state demand (specifically the
rebuilding after the fires in multiple counties).
Meeting with James... Product of Mrs. Laurie Goss & East Nicholas FFA
I started thinking on the way home from our conference. I
have heard many times about how AgEd has the best model for education and how
we will have over 100 student teachers coming out in the next year. But why and how is AgEd continuing
this uphill climb while other CTE programs seem to be in a constant state of
simmer? The state is begging for more CTE and budgeting millions of dollars
towards CTE, and then just hoping that program numbers will increase and the
number of students produced will continue to climb. This is all happening
without much thought to the infrastructure to how programs grow and become
successful. It’s pretty simple—TEACHERS!
Non-Ag CTE teachers do not have the structure, support or
lines of communication that agriculture teachers have. AgEd definitely has the
FFAmily idea worked out and it’s part of the reason we are successful. We have
meetings regularly and are updated on state funding and legislation. Other
sectors don’t have that… Other sectors don’t produce kids that graduate high
school passionately dreaming to teach that industry to others, like AgEd does.
How can we continue to promote all CTE industries if we don’t
have the teachers in all those areas? Why don’t kids want to be construction
teachers, culinary teachers, child development teachers, etc? There are 15
industry sectors provide CTE opportunities. But why have we as an AgEd profession
not worked with them to make their structure and communication as good as ours?
Why do they promote just their industry and not becoming a teacher of the
industry???
Teachers are the backbone of agriculture education. When you
look at programs throughout the state, teachers are the reason their program
and students are successful. Other CTE sectors really need to model the
teacher-educator programs we have to ensure the fate of CTE programs is a successful
one. Kids leave agriculture programs and want to become agriculture teachers,
that’s just not the same in other classes like culinary and construction. But
we cannot continue to offer CTE programs in California without more teachers
getting CTE credentials. CTE programs need to build the infrastructure to
attract kids not just to the trade but also to the classroom. If you don’t have
students that want to do what you do, unfortunately you might not be doing it
right…
Success breeds success...
Passion for a job breeds passion for a job...
Continuing education breeds life long learners...
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