Pivoting My Career and My Focus
After more than 2 decades leading job skills training programs in community and technical colleges, I’ve pivoted my focus from teaching to student learning, and thought you might like to know why.
I landed in higher education leading a 24-month, U.S. Department of Labor grant after my finance career aspirations imploded during the economic turbulence of 1998. The project management class I took during my MBA program had really resonated with me, so I thought “…yeah, I can handle this training program project.”
Yet, what started as a paycheck opportunity quickly turned into a meaningful career pivot.
A little backstory might help; I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland in the 70s and 80s, which involved watching manufacturing and industrial operations shut down, one after another. The women and men losing their jobs were the parents of my school friends. If you were around at the time, these stats will sound familiar: General Motors shut down their Broening Highway plant after 70 yrs, eliminating 7,000 jobs; the Western Electric plant next door shut down, eliminating 6,200 jobs; and Bethlehem Steel scaled back their mill workforce from ~24k, to 2,300. Not to mention all the supply chain and support businesses (Harvey’s Subs, etc.) that were impacted.
These layoffs hit home, whether or not your parents were now one of the newly dislocated or underemployed workers. We bumped into my buddy Tom’s father at a Home Depot in an orange smock, and then Brendan’s mother who was now a cashier at the grocery.
I was not expecting my pivot from finance to higher education to be particularly revelatory, yet it did help me wake up to the fact that we can find purpose in our career choices. This training program project wasn’t just a paycheck, it was my opportunity to help position people for a better quality of life – for careers which are personally and financially rewarding, can support a family, build and sustain communities, and are critical to the on-going expansion of the US economy.
Early on in my job skills training career, I became convinced that the instructor at the front of the room was key to our students’ success – not just in terms of building their knowledge and skills so that they’re fully prepared for their next role in the workforce, but also in terms of building the confidence in our learners that they were on the right path. So, a focus of my work became concentrating on the “teaching” function, and in helping our instructors become the best version of their teacher-selves possible.
Overtime, the more I got to know our students, their successes and their struggles, I came to recognize that access to Subject Matter Expert instructors and well-equipped classrooms does not create the same experience or provide the same benefit to all students. A range of different and intersecting factors can marginalize learners by creating barriers to their progress.
Take for example students’ physical or emotional attributes, or the social or cultural practices that come into the classroom with them, all of which can affect their ability to engage with content, complete assignments, and learn.
A great starting point to address student learning is to support teachers in their understanding of the intersections of income, technology use, race, (dis)ability, ethnicity, biology, family situation … the multiplicity of unique factors each student is carrying with them into the classroom. In my experience, when these factors are not addressed, they can lead to disengagement, lackluster performance on assignments and a diminished interest in science, technology, engineering, and math courses more broadly. Ultimately, dynamic and rewarding STEM-related career opportunities are not available to them because they’ve either done poorly in the foundational courses, or ignored them entirely.
In short, helping teachers understand the assets and lived experience their students bring into the classroom and then determine how to leverage these factors - both the positive ones and the challenging ones - enhances the student’s learning during the term, as well as their sense of self-worth and self-efficacy for a lifetime.
Enter the NEIR System Change Model for Education (NEIR Model), and its emphasis on creating Effective Learning Environments (ELEs). A colleague I worked with when I began my community college career, Claudia Morrell, has spent decades diving into research AND practice with experts at every level of the education system to understand what truly effective teachers do in their practice, and what school systems did, or did not do, to affect substantive, sustainable change.
NEIR Model ELEs have demonstrated through statistically measurable results that they improve academic outcomes so that all students thrive both academically and personally. When teachers are able to see and work with the “Whole Child,” recognizing and responding to the assets and challenges each brings into the classroom, their practice changes, and they are empowered to create a highly effective learning environment where learning can take place for every student.
So, my recent career pivot has involved my shift in focus, from teaching to learning, and from working in a community college setting to co-leading a non-profit, the STEM Educator Initiative (SEI). In SEI’s system change model for education, I get to support student learning through my own understanding and application of lifelong learning to careers and life! It’s a thrill to have this opportunity to bring my expertise into our work to build a better world for all STEM and Career and Technical Education (CTE) educators and the students they engage daily.
Stay tuned!
