High school and community college career and technical education teachers will have a chance to discuss alignment of curriculum to Maine and industry standards, innovations in the trade areas, assessment agreements, and exemplary practices in the world of work at the annual CTE conference Friday, Oct. 5 at the Lewiston Regional Technical Center.
Commissioner Stephen Bowen will serve as the keynote speaker and present Maine’s CTE Teacher of the Year award.
The conference will offer 10 to 15 breakout sessions centered on the theme, “CTE Best Practices in the Classroom.” Teachers choose two sessions, which cover topics such as determining students’ learning styles and developing meaningful writing prompts for CTE classrooms. In one workshop, the director of Bangor’s United Technologies Center – the facility largely responsible for Hermon High School’s recent launch of the five-year high school program – will explain how to design a partnership between CTE, the local high school, a community college and Maine’s university system to build a Bridge Year program in your area.
More than 350 teachers are expected at this year’s conference. The annual conference is an opportunity to share best practices from around Maine and also a chance to highlight the importance of career and technical education.
Maine has 27 secondary CTE centers and regions that provide students with industry-based, 21st-century career and occupational skills and knowledge, as well as pathways to post-secondary education and training.
With strong support from Governor Paul LePage and the Maine Legislature, Maine has improved access to CTE programs for all students and the transferability of credits to higher education.
The average high school graduation rate for students concentrating in CTE programs is 90.18 percent, compared to a national rate of 74.9 percent. Additionally, experts project 47 million job openings in the decade ending 2018. About one-third of those jobs will require an associate’s degree or certificate, and nearly all will require real-world skills that can be mastered through CTE.
The CTE conference will be held from 8 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.
Registration
To attend the conference, please send your name, position title and CTE program to Doris Martineau at dmartineau@lewistonpublicschools.org no later than Friday, September 28, at 9 a.m.