Conference participants review main points from one of the sessions.

Fifty employees from 10 different Job Corps centers, including the four HYS-operated centers, focused on teaching strategies to improve student learning and achievement during the four-day HYS Educational Leadership Conference July 28-30 in San Antonio, Texas.

Leading the conference were Crystal Hamer, HYS director of curriculum and instruction, HYS President Pete Calvo, Glori Stewart, HYS director of development, educational consultants Drs. Jeanine Staples and Angela McIver, and Ramon Serrato and Dr. Donald Perras.

The conference was designed to help centers ensure integration between academics, career technical training programs and counseling services by developing shared expectations and resources and encouraging collaboration between all program areas.

As a result of the conference, all HYS centers are working on new prerequisites for enrollment, curriculum guides and instruction strategies to help students achieve both short- and long-term goals in both academic and career technical coursework. Centers will adopt a "chunking of instruction" strategy to reach long-term educational and job training goals by meeting a series of carefully planned, clearly defined short-term goals. The curriculum will focus on students mastering these short-term goals on small, incremental scales, which serve as stepping-stones to achieving their long-range goals.

This approach will help instructors gauge students’ progress through their academic and training programs, set milestones for achievement, and fine-tune teaching strategies to help individual students. Rather than waiting until a student has almost completed an instructional course to determine that he or she is not doing well, instructors can quickly identify and respond to areas in which the student needs additional help. As students achieve each new short-term goal, their knowledge and skill base broadens, they better understand course material, do better on TABE tests, and can move on to the next goal in this clear, progressive approach to education.

This new teaching strategy requires integration of literacy and numeracy skills in both academic and career technical programs, and close coordination between academic and career technical instructors and counseling staff to provide a solid case management approach to ensure each student’s success.

"This is the first time in the 20 years I’ve been associated with Job Corps that there has been a deliberate effort to combine and coordinate all three areas of academics, career technical training and counseling to provide a customized educational plan for each student," said HYS President Pete Calvo.

By mid-September, each HYS center will develop plans to incorporate all training elements from the conference, including defining specific short- and long-term goals for academic and career technical programs.

Later this fall, HYS corporate educational staff will provide additional professional development support for instructors and will monitor each center’s progress in achieving these new goals. Each center also will develop a Curriculum and Instruction Committee to promote collaboration between academics and career technical programs, and ensure the curriculum is aligned with career success standards.

Conference attendees represented Frenchburg, Flatwoods, Carl D. Perkins, Potomac, Great Onyx and Talking Leaves Job Corps Centers and D.P. Enterprises, Serrato Corp., and Deleontech.