At a Glance
The Center for Professional Development at Temple University is committed to providing an increased presence and support to career and technical teachers in Pennsylvania for teachers to be confident as CTE teachers. Two new strategies were planned and implemented in 2021-2022 to address the network of support.
Description
In 2021-2022, the Center provided and hosted Best Practices Collaboration (BPC) meetings for CTE teachers from like CIP Codes or from related cluster programs for the purpose of providing a unique professional development experience for the participants. Teachers met to collaborate and share instructional strategies, uses of technology, project-based learning, cooperative education opportunities, and other topics. There was a focus on helping CTE teachers learn and use online teaching and learning strategies. The meetings will also provide an opportunity for the participants to learn new technologies from industry experts who will be invited to join and participate in some of the meetings.
The Center planned and organized the meetings and assisted with facilitating the meetings. However, teacher leaders from each BPC group were encouraged to facilitate the meeting discussions. This is particularly useful as the discussions will often include technical topics that require background knowledge and experience that the Temple staff do not have. Career and Technical Distinguished School Leaders will be invited to attend and participate in these meetings.
The plan for the 2021-22 school year was to start the year by offering these meetings in a virtual environment using Zoom as the presentation platform. In-person meetings at CTC’s may be held later in the year if travel and visitor restrictions are reduced or removed. We will also attempt to attract more participation this year. While some meetings had good participation (15-20 teachers) last year, other meetings had less attendance (4-6 teachers). We will use more attractive visuals in the invitations, and we will update the list of teachers by CIP Code area to be sure all potential teachers get our invitations.
We plan to start the year with groups that were started last year in the following areas: Transportation Cluster, Welding, Construction Cluster, Health Care, and Culinary Arts. We would like to add additional groups including cosmetology.
Impact
The Center for Professional Development at Temple University is committed to providing an increased presence and support to career and technical teachers in Pennsylvania for teachers be confident as CTE teachers. The cluster group meetings have been very successful and will be continued for the next school year. The peer-mentoring will also be continued as the strategy is new and only beginning to gain traction.
Contact
Temple University-Center for Professional Development in Career and Technical Education
Mary Miller-Ettwein M.Ed., Director of Curriculum
mme@temple.edu
Patience Lehrman, Ed.D., Center Director
Patience@temple.edu