WTEA Information
Earlier this fall I was invited to attend an Educational Summit meeting with many other Career and Technology Education representatives. At the summit WTEA was represented by three members of our board, Dan Jones, Phil Bickelhaupt, and myself. There were representatives from most CTE related organizations, I believe there were close to twenty groups represented. The summit was to focus on promoting CTE in Wisconsin. I must admit, I initially agreed to attend the meeting because I did not want another group formed that would further divide the Technology/Engineering instructors. There are many organizations that Technology Education instructors are a part of such as WACTE, ACTE, WTEA, ITEA, WALEW and it seems their influence is divided. All of these organizations are good and serve their purpose; but it seems that technology educators are pulled in many directions and I am more interested in pulling together rather than dividing.
To give you a bit of the flavor of the day, we began the day with a philosophical discussion regarding the purpose of the summit. There were many thoughts shared and discussed which may be summed up by the following three statements. The summit wishes to:
- encourage a "confederation" of CTE groups that speak with a unified
voice and continue to enhance our work in a unified way.
- unite to create a positive environment that promotes the effectiveness
of all CTE groups and professionals; including identifying
tools/resources that strengthen and support these professionals.
- avoid changing any group or unnecessarily creating a new one -- we
move forward to effectively work together and present a unified voice
for Wisconsin CTE.
The focus of the meeting was to explore the interest of CTE organizations in identifying common ground that all CTE organizations and participants could support. It was encouraging to see so many organizations working together for students. Rather than looking for areas of disagreement, the group was striving to find areas we could agree upon and speak to on behalf of students. The general theme was to create “one voice” for CTE. Currently we have many groups promoting their own organization and attempting to get the ear of legislators. Simply put, this is an attempt to unite a larger group that can speak to generally agreed upon issues that affect all CTE organizations. Each organization will undoubtedly have specific issues dealing with their organization, but they can speak loud enough to be heard statewide on agreed upon issues. The general feeling seemed to be that together we could accomplish more working to promote all of CTE than individual organizations can accomplish working separately.
I feel that the larger body may have the ability to have more of an impact at the legislative level. I felt very positive about the effort to develop a unified voice that could speak on behalf of all CTE. With more people speaking a unified message, the message may be loud enough for more to hear. Organizations will still have their own specific needs and will work toward accomplishing them. We as Technology Education will have different issues specific to Technology Education but we can still unite on issues common to all CTE.
There were no specific points of unity listed at the first meeting; the group will begin to work on specific items at the next meeting. One last point, the group discussed joining together on April 20, 2005 for a legislative day. This is a day that WACTE has scheduled with legislators and there was a suggestion that all CTE organizations join together and address legislators on that day. We will have further discussion on this at a January meeting and I will pass the information on to you.
As you prepare to move on to second semester don’t forget to take time to keep the axe sharp. (if the reference doesn’t make sense check the “Connect – On-Line Journal at: http://www.wtea-wis.org/artman/publish/article_145.shtml). Work wisely and remember to enjoy the good moments with your students. Have a great second semester.
Dennis Nelson
© Copyright 2005 Wisconsin Technology Education Association
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