This boot camp consisted of a cohort of experience-base licensed teachers from Racine Unified School District and Kenosha Unified School District who attended a series of four seminars from Fall 2017 through Spring 2019. The “boot camp” seminars were designed to help the participants, hired as content experts, become effective CTE teachers. Each seminar consisted of two days of face-to-face instruction with faculty identified by the University of Wisconsin-Stout as having expertise in the seminar content as well as K-12 experience. The face-to-face sessions were followed by online interaction and assignments over the remainder of the fall or spring semester. Demographic data describing the participants is provided in Appendix A.
Before the first seminar, participants were asked to respond to survey questions about their past experience, and identify their strengths and areas for improvement based on a list of learning objectives for the four seminars. Over 40% of the participants had more than 10 years of industry experience in their content area, followed by 21% with 7-10 years and 21% with 4-6 years. Their education or teaching related experience prior to being hired varied as widely as the participants, from substitute teaching or being a professional educator in a different discipline or grade level to training individuals or groups at work, teaching Boy/Girl Scouts, exercise classes, church classes, or coaching. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being a very effective teacher, 58% of participants rated themselves a 4 prior to the seminars. Table 1 indicates the strengths and areas for improvement identified by participants in their teaching prior to the seminars.
