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"NYSUT offers range of services in Voc Ed."

An essay assignment on 'How to bleed brakes' is just one of the ways vocational education teachers are helping kids make the grade

Matthew Tarolli hears the refrain almost daily from his students: "Why do we have to do this stuff?"

"My comeback is that this is going to make you a better chef, or a better mechanic," said Tarolli, applied science instructor in the career and technical education program at the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison Board of Cooperative Educational Services in Syracuse.

Push-in or pull-out? The technical programs at the Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES and the Ulster BOCES both rely on what they call a "push-in" concept. The English Language Arts teachers work with students at their career training sites. "We try to model teamwork; that is the essence of the program," said Vito Rinaldo of PNW BOCES. Ulster teachers said keeping students in their technical settings helps "marry" academic and vocational content. On the other hand, the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES is in its first year of a "pull-out" model for integrating academics. Applied science and math teachers spend extended periods once a week with each occupational cluster. Developing curriculum in tandem with occupational teachers, they have the flexibility to offer instruction in the shops or in their own classrooms. "This is unique," said Kathie Collins, the work-study coordinator, "because most of the other BOCES are using a push-in model." Her program is based on the premise that the academics can be taught separately from job training, and that they can be integrated creatively outside of the shop.

"Too often, the kids come in with a preconception of math and science" based on previous failures or pure boredom with abstract contexts, he said.

But once he gives them standards-based science projects that relate to their career fields - like a demonstration of how heat breaks down motor oil, or a study correlating hair health with hair length - the students embrace the lessons as an extension of the trades for which they have already found a passion.

Subtly, Tarolli and applied math instructor Marcia Burrell, members of the OCM BOCES Federation of Teachers, are convincing their occupational students that academic knowledge and skills are important, even in hands-on trades such as culinary arts, auto mechanics, floral arts and cosmetology.

Union advocacy

New York State United Teachers has long supported strengthening academic content in career and technical education programs. In support of its members in vocational education, NYSUT offers a wide range of services and advocacy. (See article at right.) Now, more than ever, as the state ratchets up standards for all students, "We must ensure that vocational education does not fall by the wayside," said NYSUT President Tom Hobart.

And for vocational education teachers, convincing their students of the need for higher level academics can be a hard sell. "Many of these students are non-traditional learners who had difficulty previously" in comprehensive high schools, said M. Kathie Collins, work-study coordinator for OCM BOCES. "Often the vocational education program works for them. But with the new state requirements, that just isn't enough."

Since New York state has started to phase in new, tougher academic Regents Examinations as requirements for a high school diploma, students who had found ways to sidestep previous academic requirements are feeling the pressure.

"The pressure comes from being plunged into a class to review basic skills," said Burrell. "But they're struggling with arithmetic because they haven't had to use the basics in two or three years. With math, if you don't use them, you lose them."

With a little thought, however, math skills are easily adaptable. "If you're teaching culinary students how to cost out food, you're teaching four or five math objectives at once," said Burrell.

The write stuff

Making the standards relevant also works in language arts.

"We don't have a lot of readers and confident writers in our programs," said Rochele Laccetti-Marced, a technical communications instructor and member of the Ulster County BOCES Organization. "They resent it, until we can show them that it has a purpose."

Ulster technical communications instructor Kurt Lambert took his motorcycle power students through the rigors of English composition by asking them to write about what they do. The topic: an essay on how to "bleed" brakes. The rubric required them to use information from lectures, from outlines they developed after doing research on the shop computer, putting technical shorthand into formal English, as if they were explaining it to a customer.

At the Ulster BOCES, in the first five weeks of school, students must produce three descriptive essays, two informative essays, one expository essay on a trade subject, three summaries of trade-journal articles, five formal and informal written journal responses to listening passages, and a three- to five-page paper written with citations in the Modern Language Association format. Subsequent five-week projects delve into novels, poetry, drama and technical communication, each with similar writing loads.

"We had to show them that this can be trade-related," said Marced, who teaches early childhood education. "If you integrate it well enough, it's almost subliminal and they don't even realize they are doing it. Still, all these things will lead the way to higher level reading and writing."

Portable skills

"Even if they don't go on to work in the field, we offer the kids an experience they can take with them anywhere they go," said Vito Rinaldo of the United Staff Association, who teaches in the Communications Academy, a commercial art, television production and computer graphics program at the Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES. "We're just doing it in a contextual way in these courses they already feel passionate about."

It has a lot to do with teaching students how to think for themselves.

"A lot of these kids have never had anybody force them to problem-solve," said Burrell. "This is completely transferable (to other disciplines or trades). I'm seeing second-year students really begin to solve problems, and previously they were just going through the mechanics of the job."

- Ned R. Hoskin

NYSUT offers range of services in voc ed

New York State United Teachers supports its members in vocational education with services that encompass advocacy, training and research.

Among its many activities, NYSUT's BOCES Committee - composed of BOCES teacher representatives from across the state - arranges an annual educational conference for NYSUT's BOCES members. Through the union's Committee of 100, BOCES committee members and their colleagues lobby state lawmakers for passage of initiatives that address BOCES concerns, including the need for state funding and support. The union also surveys BOCES leaders annually to learn their particular concerns and priorities.

NYSUT's Career Development, Occupational Studies and Technology Committee is one of nine subject-area committees NYSUT has created to help it better respond to the many new content and assessment initiatives coming from the State Education Department. The committee meets regularly and advises the union on a wide range of issues involving occupational, vocational and technical education in K-12, BOCES and secondary education.