Interview assignment

Anytime an assignment makes us seek out new information there will be a positive benefit. I have not done my interview yet because I am still trying to decide what benefit I want from this assignment. I was initially leaning towards doing an interview with a technical school administrator because I felt a need to start building better bridges for my students to the community and get better opportunities for them to experience health care. However, after reading the posts this week I see a lot of benefit in interviewing the school counselor. I have not had much interaction with my counselors at all. At our school all teachers are expected to participate in a twice a year event called arena planning where students have the maps to be completed for their four years and go to each department to get counseled on what classes to take. Students have come to the career tech department and ask questions to determine what the classes are like. We ask get to ask the students questions to help determine what their likes are and what their goals are. I would like to know though, what the counselors know of my program and how they help students decide to take my classes. I have had good experiences so far with students wanting to be in my class overall. Next year, however, we are going to a modified block schedule and it has been stressed that all classes will be scheduled to capacity because new teachers will not be hired, hopefully no one is laid off, and normal attrition of teachers will not be filled. This could impact my class in that I will have more students who are not interested in health care. I do feel that now is an important time to may the connections I need to make with the counselors and find out their perspectives on my program.