Ag teacher Carrie Putz, Industrial Arts teacher Colby Page and Business/Computer Science teacher Michelle Fay recently attended a Career and Technical Education conference in San Antonio. The conference, held December 4-7, featured workshops, sessions and collaboration time for Career and Technical Education teachers from across the country. While there, Putz also attended the National Association of Agricultural Educators conference.
All three teachers took away several learnings that they will implement in their classrooms. Mrs. Fay is hoping to add Sphero robots to her programming class, and learned that Lego is working on programming lessons for the high school level. She also gained perspective about how to teach accounting from Sean Creiver, who taught about “Making Money Easy with Stories.” She has followed up to incorporate the resources he shared into her classroom.
Mr. Page learned about ways to teach kids about the different kinds of measurements and spoke with several welding companies to gain insight into how Melcher-Dallas can access discounts to benefit the welding program.
Mrs. Putz enjoys going to NAAE/ACTE conferences as it is a great opportunity to attend agricultural-related workshops and connect and reconnect with Ag teachers from across the country. The workshops often offer hands-on activities to bring back to the classroom. This year, she focused on workshops covering floral and food and asked in depth questions in all agricultural areas to make students dig deeper into specific curriculum.
Mrs. Putz with Iowa Ag Teachers
Mrs. Fay and Mr. Page
Sphero robots