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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2001: article | |
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Center helps new and established teachers reach their potential By Karen L. Trimbath | ||||||
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Mary Lou Lebo, a native of Northumberland County, started out in life as a cosmetologist who owned her own salon and taught cosmetology at a private school. Then she proceeded to spend the next 20 years teaching in a public vocational-technical cosmetology program. Now Lebo spends her days working with newly recruited teachers of technical careers, including carpentry, auto mechanics and computer technology, among others, and enthusiastically conveying to them the fine art of teaching. Lebo is a field resource instructor with the Professional Personnel Development Center for Career and Technical Education at Penn State. The center provides teacher preparation and in-service programs for working professionals who want to become career and technical education teachers through alternate forms of state certification, as well as offers professional development activities to established agricultural teachers. This type of workforce development is an important outreach activity that couldn’t be accomplished without Penn State, said the center’s co-directors, Dr. Richard Walter, associate professor of education in the College of Education, and Dr. Dennis Scanlon, professor of agricultural and extension education in the College of Agricultural Sciences. “Our services are truly an outreach function,” Scanlon said. “Penn State is a very important presence in the field of cooperative and workforce education. Through its faculty expertise and networks, it provides a critical mass without which the center couldn’t operate.” The impetus for the center’s creation began in the early 1970s, when the Pennsylvania Department of Education tasked three higher education institutions with strong workforce education reputations — Penn State, Temple University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania — to administer career and technical teacher preparation programs. Each institution would be responsible for one-third of the state. Penn State was assigned to central Pennsylvania. Since its inception in 1977, the Penn State center has fit neatly into the University’s long-established teacher education and workforce development infrastructure, Scanlon and Walter said. The center is associated with two University academic units — the Workforce Education and Development Program, represented by Walter, and the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, represented by Scanlon. The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Bureau of Career and Technical Education funds the Professional Personnel Development Center for Career and Technical Education at Penn State. Although the center focuses its vocational-technical teacher services on central Pennsylvania, its agricultural education services benefit a five-state area — Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia — that comprises the Five-Star Consortium. “Although the center’s first responsibility is Pennsylvania, it must take a regional approach for agricultural education,” Scanlon said. “All consortium states have an ongoing need for teachers in this field.” Agricultural teachers who already have baccalaureate degrees enroll in the center’s workshops for ongoing professional development. They can study new teaching methods and the latest agricultural research. Past workshop topics have included the role of GPS (global positioning systems) in dairy production and the collaborative learning process. Technical career teachers, on the other hand, have extensive work experience in such professions as cosmetology, culinary arts and heavy equipment operation, among others. Most professionals who turn to teaching are between the ages of 28 to 32, have at least an associate’s degree and have a decade or more in the workplace. This group needs alternative routes to becoming certified career and technical education teachers, and the center provides the necessary guidance, Walter said. “They’re not your typical traditional teachers, because they must have training in a specific vocation,” he added. “Our clients get this training from years in the workplace. Our staff shows them how to plan lessons and manage a classroom.” Participants who are new to teaching can take courses that lead to state certification in teaching, school administration and cooperative education. If they are already teachers, they can take sabbaticals and become training consultants or instructors who pass on their knowledge to new recruits. Many choose to complete their baccalaureate degrees, and some go on to pursue graduate education. Lebo is one of them. Having earned her bachelor’s degree in workforce development from Penn State in 1998, she has completed her master’s degree and is now in the final stages of a doctoral program. “I really credit my association with the center to divine providence,” she said. “Mentoring new teachers is stimulating — no two days are the same. I enjoy showing our clients, some of whom express doubt about their ability to handle classroom responsibilities, that they can handle teaching just fine. I show them how to trade their hard hats for a thinking cap.” Center staff members are also working on a number of related educational projects, including the training of vocational instructors from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Persian Gulf country with a growing need for skilled workers in a variety of technical professions. “The UAE has established a long-term policy to reduce its dependence on oil revenues. Its changing economy has led to a whole host of job openings that must be filled,” Walter said. “Until now, these jobs have been held by expatriates, but that should change after more UAE citizens get the skills they need. They will be taught by educators who have been prepared by our center.” | |||||
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