As Schools Tackle Coronavirus Pause, Don’t Forget Career And Technical Education Students.
At this juncture, nearly all schools in this country have been shut down, forcing teachers, families, and students to grapple with some form of crisis schooling. The need for teachers to teach and students to learn at a distance has sparked discussion of many issues. How do schools keep contact with students who have little or no access to the internet? How do teachers construct useful materials while holding in place inside their own homes? How do parents adapt to this involuntary version of home schooling?
Some of the biggest discussions, from the local level all the way up to the federal department of education, have centered on the challenge of providing crisis schooling for students with special needs. But there is one other group of students who face unique concerns, and there has been far less discussion about how the coronaviral hiatus will affect them—career and technical education students.
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My former district is part of consortium that has run a very good CTE school for many decades, training students in fields including welding, building construction, auto body repair, home health services, and operating heavy equipment. For most of my career, these students passed through my classroom, and I cannot overstate how much they have benefited from these excellent programs.
There is an obvious problem. One cannot practice welding, frame a house, or take a patient’s blood pressure over the internet. While CTE students do a great deal of book work (more, perhaps, than many folks assume), there is a hands-on element that is critical to their education.
The director of the school told me that the state has made the software education package CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: As Schools Tackle Coronavirus Pause, Don’t Forget Career And Technical Education Students.