Roxanne Trees is an O*NET devotee you need to meet. Currently Roxanne works as a specialist, Career and Technical Education, Health and Human Services Pathway, for Seattle Washington Public Schools. To say the least, she is a huge energy source driving Seattle's schools to excellent career education, using O*NET to achieve her success. Her work brings Human Services and Health Sciences education to Seattle students, while leading a group of 26 people who are responsible for delivering the educational program in this Pathway.
Yes, Roxanne had heard of O*NET and was vaguely aware of it being an occupational database and exploration tool. But this year, after running into Jane Field (see Jane Field Spotlight) at a third conference, Roxanne concluded that getting to know Jane, and this O*NET that Jane promoted, HAD to be important.
While seated at the same table, Roxanne told Jane she was leading a workshop for her Pathway's teachers in two days. Jane seized the moment and made Roxanne a copy of her Jobs for the Sidewalk Economist book and workbook. Roxanne is a quick study and realized immediately how O*NET could help her and her colleagues in their endeavors. She introduced the teachers to O*NET and they burst with enthusiasm for using it. "The teachers thought O*NET was fabulous. They wanted to help their kids find what skills they needed to do a job. The teachers also needed to identify the skills and tasks of occupations for developing course content." O*NET was perfect.
How timely Roxanne's discovery! At that moment she and her colleagues needed to have all of their courses re-approved--now. They are in the process of revamping each course. They must show how they are developing leadership skills in their courses; they are accountable for demonstrating that each Pathway of study and each course has content that develops employability skills in the occupations of the specific Career Cluster. Also up for consideration is, cross-crediting courses across Pathways. For example, might a Career and Technical Education course fulfill a requirement in art, social studies, or English, as well? Where are abilities, skills, work contexts, etc. common across multiple Pathways? Roxanne and her colleagues must ensure that their courses comply with and accommodate national standards, industry standards, Carl D. Perkins requirements, and other benchmarks.
There is no tool better suited to facilitating all these processes than O*NET. It has the breadth of occupational information these career educators need to do their redesign work. O*NET provides each group of five or six people planning and reorganizing a course the structure they need to work through their process. They can lay out "career clusters, determine program sequences, lay a good map to a career," using O*NET as the source of objectives, and the "check" that we have it right, explains Roxanne. "For every occupation, you can support your argument for the content a course should include, stated in common language. O*NET has been a fabulous tool for us many times over. It's our primary tool for this work. I've shared O*NET with county teachers, with teachers in other Pathways, and in other career clusters," Roxanne continues.
It doesn't take 15 minutes with Roxanne to realize that she is an amazing person. Raised in Eastern Washington, she wanted to live in an urban area. Having picked Seattle, she married a Montana man, taught art, and sciences several places—including a few years with the Department of Defense schools in Germany. Still, she and her husband wanted to return to being Seattlites. Much as they enjoy the outdoors, and visiting in Montana, Roxanne enjoys working intown in the old restored Seattle Post Office. The Seattle Schools are very fortunate that her pathway went their way.
|
