FINANCIAL DISTRICT — Don't call it vocational school anymore.
It's now known as Career and Technical Education.
Public school programs that teach skilled trades are focusing more on applied science and technology — and figuring out how to adapt their lessons to these rapidly changing fields. Instead of learning how to use wrenches in auto-mechanics class, for instance, students now need to study things like electric car design.
But making sure these programs are aligned with the 21st century job market means their teachers need to be re-trained.
This summer, about 100 city teachers will be attending boot camps run by companies like Adobe (for graphic arts), Apple (for educational technology foundations), the Greater New York Automotive Dealers Association (for automotive technology) and C-Tech (for IT training), Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday with leaders from the teachers union and business community at an event held at the Downtown headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers.
"This is about coming to a reckoning about the importance of career and technical education in today’s world, and a redefinition of what it means for today’s world," de Blasio said.
These programs offer pathways into middle class jobs in the tech community, he said, adding that "we are going to strengthen them and we are going to make them available to even more.”
There are 318 CTE programs in the city, including 51 designated CTE high schools, serving roughly 120,000 students across the five boroughs.
This first group of teachers in this summer's boot camp will then help train other CTE teachers at their schools.
"Before we roll it out to students, we need to train teachers," UFT president Michael Mulgrew said.
Because the city's trade schools need to be re-certified every three or so years, they need a system of continued education, which is why training teachers to then train their colleagues is critical, he said.
"Industry will tell you what you need, but they won't tell you how to design it to make it user-friendly inside a school," he explained.
When Alexander Bell started at Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School in Jamaica nearly three decades ago, he taught business machine repair for basic electronics, typewriters and copy machines.
Now, he teaches a class called "IT Specialists," he said, noting that many of his students get A+ certification, an internationally recognized seal-of-approval denoting that someone has the technical know-how for foundation-level IT work.
Bell himself attended a program that focused on the trades when he was growing up in a "rough" part of Williamsburg. His shop teacher saw Bell's promise and encouraged him to go into the field of teaching.
"It saved my life," Bell said.
Yet, while the city is throwing its support behind CTE schools, many are still reeling from budget cuts made to job-training programs during the recession.
Many CTE programs are operating with only 80 percent of the funding needed to run their schools, said Deno Charalambous, principal of Aviation High School in Long Island City, where students graduate with certification from the Federal Aviation Authority.
"We are at a breaking point," Charalambous told Mulgrew at the event.
"The city is now completely behind making these CTE programs grow,” Mulgrew responded. "Now, it’s time to get them the proper funding."
