Fitzsimmons was simply a riot. Not only did he talk about humorous headlines from his paper, but he wove through his presentation the value of education and the work that educators do. Fitzsimmons said that during his woodshop class he “had an unhealthy focus on perfectionism and drafting tools.” That, through various twists and turns, lead him to cartooning. 

“I love politics,” said Fitzsimmons, as he broke down the word into “poli,” meaning many and “tics,” meaning bloodsucking leeches. He also said that the CTE community suffers from “acronymania,” an amazing number of acronyms that nobody can possibly keep straight.

Throughout his presentation, Fitzsimmons brought members of the audience up to the stage and proceeded to do caricatures of them. One of the best was of NCLA Executive Director Tom Applegate. 

Fitzsimmons wrapped up his hour-long presentation by reminding educators to “have a healthy sense of humor because you are essential.” I think attendees really enjoyed this presentation and it was a great way to finish up the conference on an enjoyable note.

Those of us who decided to take advantage of the tours were treated to another great experience. I went with about a dozen other educators to the Cord Blood Registry. This is the largest umbilical cord blood storage facility, with about 250,000 samples.

Basically what happens here is that people send the blood from umbilical cords to this facility, which separates the stem cells from the plasma and red blood cells and then stores the stem cells. These cells can then be used to potentially help the child or possibly other family members with certain diseases. In fact more than 70 diseases are treated with cord blood right now, according to our tour director.

The big issue with this facility and CTE is that the facility needs technicians to process the blood samples and maintain the facility, which has the potential to store millions of samples. As more and more families decide to save the cord blood this facility and others like it will need a workforce with a biotechnology background–another opportunity for CTE students.

Following the tour, the conference was over. I can’t wait to hear what everyone has to say in the evaluations–I only heard good things!

Thanks for reading and see you next year in Austin for the 2009 ACTE/NCLA Best Practices Conference.

In the meantime, here is what I learned:

* I sat in on the TUSD Biotechnology Leadership Innovation Project session to hear about how they started the biotech program. It basically consists of four components: Classroom Integration; Lab Integration; Work-based Learning; and CTSO. I am always impressed by how CTE programs really think about what they are doing and how it will benefit students, the community and the economy. In this program, it includes field trips, which according to presenter David Fuller, “gave the students the real-world view so they could see what they were learning in the classroom had value.” It also has a job shadowing component and the one piece of advice Fuller had for job shadows in biotech is to allow the students to do it in pairs. Finally, it has summer internships. The biggest addition, however, was the use of HOSA and the HOSA competitions. Fuller said it really gave focus to his students who participated. In fact, he had a student that won the state competition and went on to nationals. Here’s a short video on what the Opening General Session at HOSA looked like this year.

* I also popped over to hear about an eighth to ninth grade transition program from Peoria High School. This program began because the school was seeing 31% discipline referrals for freshman and 57% of freshmen had 10 or more absences. The first step was to get the key people from the feeder schools together to have a frank discussion about the issues they are having with the incoming freshman and to get the schools’ and students’ perceptions of high school. Based on that information, the high school developed a new program by which the head guidance counselor visits each school and they bring the students to the high school for them to get a “sample” day, called “Panther Previews.” The school also set up a mentoring program. The results? Discipline referrals dropped to 19% and only 23% of freshmen had 10 or more absences. If you want more info, call the school at 623-486-6300. The principal is Kayla Carter, the assistant principals are Monique Molina and Philip Camacho.

* Lastly I sat in on a session about connecting with your counselors. This was a program from Walton County Schools in Georgia. They wanted a way to connect the counselors to the CTE programs. What they did was institute:

Counselors in the Classroom–Counselors come in and visit CTE classrooms to see what goes on.
Curriculum Workshop for Counselors–Gives updates on what is happening in CTE classrooms and how these programs can benefit students.
K-12 Career Development Notebook–This is a notebook for counselors that is full of information on the CTE programs and a calendar of events.

The result was that counselors were excited to learn about the various CTE programs, to see students work, and they gained confidence when telling students and parents about CTE programs. If you want to learn more about this exciting program, e-mail presenters Marci Campbell (mcampbell@walton.k12.ga.us) or Karen Rutter (krutter@walton.k12.ga.us).  

If you are curious about her program, you can contact her:

Mary Anne Berens
623-256-5491
mberens@peoriaud.k12.az.us

The other session I sat in on was by Debbie Langenbach from Raymond Kellis High School and her culinary program. Debbie was kind enough to give me a quick rundown of the program and to give me a couple of very tasty chocolate chip cookies. Debbie was nice enough to give me an interview. Take a listen:roundtable1 If you want to contact Debbie you can:

Debbie Langenbach
623-412-5425
dlangenbach@peoriaud.k12.az.us 

This is a partnership between schools, local businesses, Peoples Bank, teachers and students. The students complete CTE projects, which are displayed and cash awards are given. It sounds like a great program and a lot of instructors were in the session and asked a lot of questions.

I was lucky to get Mr. Coffman off to the side after the presentation and was able to get the PowerPoint presentation to share with you: festival-of-learning-presentation. I hope you get something out of this.

Following the concurrent sessions, was a lunch presentation in which ACTE Executive Director Jan Bray gave a presentation and an update of ACTE activities. In her passionate speech, Bray said, “CTE is rising to the top of the education dialogue and we need to make sure it stays at the top. This is our opportunity.” She went on to give an update on ACTE’s activities, including podcasts, research, Convention, and membership.

Following Bray’s presentation, Jeanea Lambeth gave a rundown of the new CTE Research Agenda that was approved by the ACTE Board of Directors. This agenda was highlighted in a recent issue of Techniques magazine. If you want more information on it, you can certainly contact Jason Kiker in the ACTE office at 800-826-9972.

Once again, sufficiently full of lunch and cookies, I went to make sure all was well near the registration area. 

If that weren’t amazing enough, there was some wake-up music by the Marichis from the Mariachi Aztlan de Pueblo High School. These students got the crowd clapping and really waking up to start the day. Take a quick listen to this one-minute clip.Mariachi Music Clip

Now that the crowd was jazzed and awake, the stage was set for Roger Crawford. I have to say that not only was Roger a nice guy–very down to earth and easy to talk with–he was also a great speaker. I heard more than one person comment on how good he was. So, what did he talk about? Well, Roger talked about optimism. As you can see, Roger has some challenges–including his hands and a prosthetic leg. However, that never stopped him from trying everything. In fact, he attributes his success to his teachers, specifically one that told him “You’ll never reach higher with your hands in your pocket.”

Crawford urged attendees to ask themselves three questions:

1. Where are you coming from?–We all learn from the past and we need to use that knowledge to move forward.

2. How long have you been there?–Crawford reminded us that success can bring complacency and indifference. If you don’t want to stay where you are, you have to put some work into it. He relayed the story about Judy Young, his mother in law who is in the National Skeet Shooting Hall of Fame. When he asked her how she became a world champion, she said “You practice when you want to and you practice when you don’t want to.”

3. Where are you going?–Crawford is a big advocate of continuing to move and improve. He said, “You’ll find what it takes today when you see hope tomorrow.” Basically, he encouraged people to continue to look where they want to be and work to accomplish that.

Crawford’s message was extremely well received–so much so that he got a standing ovation!

This afternoon went very well. We opened registration and we have people from 26 states represented here in Tucson–a wide turn out for this event and a testament to the draw for what is happening here. 

I had two nice ladies, Jan and Linda, from the Tucson Unified School District helping me out in the registration area. They were a huge help!

I was bummed that I wasn’t able to go on the tour of the BIO5 project at the University of Arizona. Check out the material and information under the “Outreach” tab–you might be able to use some of it. Although I wasn’t able to attend, I did manage to grab someone who did go on the tour and asked her a little about it. Hear that audio interview: bio5.

The Opening Reception was a blast. We had Michael Wieser–who played the piano. He even had people signing, which is good or bad, depending on your opinion. The food was great–turkey, roast beef and all the trimmings. There were also some great desserts–I had two pieces of cheesecake. All in all, people had a great time and it really set the tone for the next two days.

Did you know that the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort was named by Architectural Digest as “the first environmentally conceived resort in North America.” Not sure when that was, as it wasn’t on the informational sign. As you can see by the photo of the hotel, it is a green facility, again, tying another CTE-related topic and program area.

All around the hotel are saguaro cacti. In fact, the Loews is right on the border of the Saguaro National Park. In addition to great best practices, it’s cool to visit these new places and learn about not only what other schools and districts are doing, but also about the location.

Later tonight, there is an opening reception, which I will report on. And, at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, there is a tour of the BIO5 facility at the University of Arizona . Although I won’t be able to attend that, I will have a guest either podcast it or write about it.

The airplane ride here was uneventful–even had an empty seat next to me. I find that on planes, I get some dedicated time to read. It’s almost like a mini best practices conference for me. I spent time reading the latest issue of Associations Now. In this issue there was an article about sending special e-cards to members around certain times of the year with specific industry-related information. It might be a good idea for ACTE to look into. There were also articles on establishing an internship and correctly pricing your products and services. I always find an article or two in this publication that is relevant to my work at ACTE.

Also on the plane they were showing Walk the Line–a movie about Johnny Cash. I had seen it before so I continued to read, but I really did enjoy this movie and you can often see me jammin’ to Folsom Prison Blues on my iPod!

The Best Practices Conference really begins tomorrow with a tour and registration. I will be in a meeting most of the morning, but I will report on activities here.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Just a bit of background: the ACTE/NCLA Best Practices Conference is a joint event by ACTE and the National Council of Local Administrators (NCLA), an affiliate of the ACTE Administration Division. The idea behind this conference is to showcase some of the best ideas in career and technical education. So, over two days, attendees will hear from experts and colleagues who are doing some pretty cool things in CTE. Add a whole lot of networking time and you have a pretty focused and dynamic professional development experience.

In doing a little research, I found this cheesy YouTube video and a song about Tucson done by Dan Fogelberg. It’s a little long, but might be worth it. The one I really like is this video–who knew that a burger joint could elicit such a response.

I head out tomorrow and basically spend the whole day traveling. I can’t wait to get there and share my experiences with you. Please feel free to share your comments and I will try to answer as many inquiries as I can.

See you in Tucson!