During its meeting last Wednesday, the board of Career and Technical Education heard that they would soon be asked to certify curriculums in a host of new subject areas for CTE in the territory.
“We have forthcoming curriculums for LPN, phlebotomy, medical massage therapy, certified medical assistance, and CNE,” said Monique Faulkner, state sirector of Career and Technical Education.
Ms. Faulkner acknowledged that CTE curriculums for some of the above subject areas have been in use, some for several years, however she maintained that “it is the best thing for us to just get them certified by the board.” That way, the courses could be integrated into highschool programs and also aligned with university programs to eliminate duplication of effort and work.
An agriculture curriculum from Mississippi is also being used as a template to develop similar material tailored for the territory. “We can Virgin Island-ize it,” Ms. Faulkner said. “It comes complete with lesson plans, everything, so we can tweak it for the Virgin Islands,” she continued, speaking about the open resource.
The “internal committee for the Department of Education”, Ms. Faulkner said, would soon be making contact with the chair of the CTE Board Committee on Curriculum & Programs Anastasie Jackson, “to start the formal process of looking at that curriculum” to decide how local authorities will proceed.
The suggestion from Ms. Faulkner was to have a general curriculum with options to specialize in locally-relevant areas such as agritourism, agribusiness, and aquaponics.
An important consideration for Ms. Faulkner is to ensure that “our students will actually be graduating with industry-recognized certification in the Virgin Islands and that’s recognized nationally and can push them forward in that arena of agriculture.”
It was noted that partnerships with the University of the Virgin Islands are central to these efforts. UVI's aquaponics expertise was cited as an example of how the new programs can provide industry-recognized certifications and potential dual credit for highschool students through articulation agreements.
Board members expressed support for Ms. Faulkner's leadership in getting these much-needed CTE programs off the ground, even as the board struggles to retain teachers for programs it is already offering.
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