Portfolio Show!

In 2023, I voluntarily transferred to a Skills Center school. I was promised so many wonderful things:

• The students CHOOSE to be in your class, so they REALLY want to be there!
• You only have two class periods per day, so it's really EASY!
• You won't have to deal with constant schedule changes due to assemblies and testing!
• The class periods are 2.5 hours so you can teach a lesson and then students actually have time to do the work!
• Super long lunch with no students!
• The ability to collaborate with other programs is so much easier!
• The budget is AMAZING!!
• The skills center is the DREAM and you'll never leave!

Some of these were absolutely true... however, we also had:

• Our class was marketed the year before as Fashion... so the majority of student who walked in the door on day one were PISSED.
• In a normal high school setting, your class size is limited to 25-27 students per period but you see like 150 faces per day. Skills center allows for larger class sizes, so we had up to 35 students per class period and up to 70 students per day.
  • There are also 27 standards to teach and score because we give 3 credits per class so with one being ELA, one being CTE, and one being ART. It's a LOT.
• Chronic absenteeism since we serve students from multiple different districts with long commutes and different schedules at each home school (plus testing schedules)
• You don't have any guaranteed prep / planning period... just 20 minutes before school, 10 minutes before lunch and up to an hour after school if there aren't meetings... Also, kids do NOT have the attention span to last 2.5 hours and stay productive.
• Feels shorter than the normal lunch at my last school because I don't have any time to plan throughout my day so I do it during lunch...
• Our programs are so spread out and busy that there's rarely any collaboration.
• The budget IS amazing, but there are a lot more strings.
• It's not the "dream" and my program was cut before it even got a chance to begin... so now my co-teacher and I are on the hunt for new positions.

There's ups and downs to every school and every program, always. This may not be the experience of everyone in a Skills Center or Vocational School, but it has been mine.

One of the BEST parts of this experience has been that I have gotten to work with my best friend as my co-teacher and we have had some amazing students come through - despite their initial reaction to the class and despite all the issues we've dealt with over the last two years.

The Portfolio Show

To showcase our program this year, our am and pm sessions worked together to put on a giant portfolio show and celebration. Here are some of the photos from our end of the year portfolio show.

Please note: This year was one of the craziest years of my teaching career. Why?

• It was the 2nd year of this program, the first year it was marketed as the correct title, but still not switched over officially in the system.
• Three days into the school year, our entire district was HACKED. We were off for another 3 days and brought back with the news that we would not have ANY technology for the forseeable future, possibly the entire school year... We're a DIGITAL MEDIA based class... so this was an interesting twist. We rewrote the entire curriculum day by day to stay completely offline.
• We didn't get access to our tech for over 3 months, even then it was limited. We finally got access to our printers after nearly 6 months. One is still down for the count and the duplo cutter never came back
• We had windstorms, power outages, snow days, etc and now our school year is extended damn near til July! But our portfolio show dates never changed.
• About 1 month before the Portfolio Show, we were informed the program was not being renewed and had to explain to our students that the Juniors would not be able to come back for the 2nd year of the program and HOPE they still wanted to do the portfolio show at all.

Our first year students created a poster with a single project featured and a QR code to their digital magazines.

Our second year students were given a booth to showcase their 2 years of work with a few first year senior students who granted the opportunity to upgrade to second year status about half way through the year based on their impressive dedication to the program and their quality of work.

Congratulations to our First and Final set of students at this school and in this Design and Marketing 2 year program, to both our first year and second year students! Not everyone was able to make it to the evening event, but everyone participated in the day's activities from set up to tear down and sharing with students in the school. We still have a month left to put finishing touches on the magazines and finish making products and we will make the most of it all!