FSNet News #20 -- December 12, 2000

CONTENTS

1 Announcements:

1.1 FutureCareers Expo Update

2 Issues & Best Practices:

2.1 Making your Advisory Boards Work

2.2 Starting or Restarting a Career Major

3 Resources:

3.1 "Basics of Saving and Investing: A Teaching Guide"

3.2 "Moral Person and Moral Manager: How Executives Develop a Reputation for Ethical Leadership"

3.3 A-G Guide

3.4 Content Knowledge

1 ANNOUNCEMENTS:

__1.1 FutureCareers Expo Update

Many of you may have heard that the Department of Education has changed the window for STAR testing. The window has changed from early April to early May 2001 and created a conflict with the FutureCareers Expo. In response, we have changed the date of the Expo to April 3, 2001. The location will remain the same, Pac Bell Park, San Francisco.

We currently have over 500 signups for the Expo representing over 15 schools. Patricia Callahan, executive vice president of human resources at Wells Fargo Bank has tentatively agreed to be our keynote speaker. If you would like more information, you can email me at or call 408-938-1516.

2 ISSUES & BEST PRACTICES:

__2.1 Making your Advisory Boards Work

The School-to-Career model is based on making real world connections in the curriculum by connecting school-based and work-based learning through various activities. Advisory boards are not only essential for developing work-based learning opportunities, but they can provide valuable information and resources necessary to create effective connecting activities.

There are a number of strategies for putting together an advisory board. Oak Grove H.S. is doing two things in particular to build an effective advisory board. The first is recruiting school and program alumni to their advisory board. One former student has taken a very active role by involving his employer, National Semiconductor, in various work-based learning opportunities. Furthermore, this advisory board member has personally contributed funds to the program that were matched by his employer and are being used by Oak Grove for student scholarship awards. Oak Grove has also recruited a former teacher. This person is also taking an active role and has donated funds for additional student scholarship awards. Oak Grove is developing a pool of advisory board members by also including some fairly recent graduates that are currently in college. What a great way to develop the expectation that current students will give back to their school by using these alumni. In addition, from my experience it is much easier to get support from the business community when their own employees are already volunteering and deeply involved in your program.

The second impressive thing that Oak Grove is doing is using current students to make presentations to the advisory board. Our industry partners are involved for one reason -- the kids. Using students greatly increases the sense of accomplishment among the advisory board members and increases their personal level of commitment. From a studentís perspective, participating in advisory board meetings adds value and importance to student leadership positions and greatly enhances studentís self-esteem.

Please share some of your own successes or highlight outstanding issues by . By sharing your best practices and outstanding issues we hope to help all programs advance and grow.

__2.2 Starting or Restarting a Career Major

Given retirements and turnover many schools find themselves in the position of starting over with respect to their STC career majors. Schools that are starting or restarting face many similar issues and problems. During a recent visit to Santa Teresa H.S. in San Jose, I had the opportunity to talk with the staff there about the issues and problems they are facing.

While Santa Teresaís award-winning desktop publishing career major is thriving with a growing number of students benefiting from their real world context and integrated curriculum, the business career major faces a number of issues. Staff turnover and retirements have had and will have a major impact on the schoolís ability to offer technical classes. Increased graduation requirements have reduced the number of possible elective classes making it difficult to build a comprehensive program. Finally, it has been very difficult to recruit teachers of academic classes to develop an integrated core.

Santa Teresa is trying to accelerate the process of developing a business career major in order to begin recruiting this spring. They are focusing on course sequencing and content. We looked at a wide range of curriculum, much of it developed by industry to teach financial literacy. One idea is to use the curriculum developed by industry and integrate it into both technical classes and core academic classes. This can be an effective way of adding a real world connection to academic classes and relevancy to technical classes. Another idea is to use SCANS to integrate technical and academic classes.

If you have suggestions or ideas of how to deal with these issues, please let us know. Also, if you would like information about industry developed curriculum or other resources that can assist in the process of integrating academic and technical content please contact us at or call 408-938-1516.

3 RESOURCES:

__3.1 "Basics of Saving and Investing: A Teaching Guide"

At previous FSNet activities teachers identified key industry content that they are including in their career majors. One of the presenters at our upcoming FutureCareers Expo, Financial Literacy 2001, has developed curriculum that address a number of these key content topics in their teaching guide.

This guide was developed to promote financial education and was co-sponsored by the Investor Protection Trust, the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc., the North American Securities Administrators Association and the California Department of Corporations. The guide focuses on:

• How to design a personal financial plan
• How financial markets work
• How to select among various saving and investment options
• How to find and use investment information
• How to recognize and victim-proof yourself against investment fraud

The guide can be used in a personal finance class or as a supplement to existing courses in social studies, economics and consumer economics, introduction to business, and mathematics. If you canít bring a class to the FutureCareers Expo, you are welcome to attend the afternoon professional development and learn more about this curriculum. You can also get more information at http://www.fl2001.org.

__3.2 "Moral Person and Moral Manager: How Executives Develop a Reputation for Ethical Leadership"

The Summer 2000 issue of the California Management Review, a professional journal published by the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, includes a very interesting discussion of ethical leadership. The authors discuss how ethical leadership is based on the twin pillars of the moral person and the moral manager. The article explains the traits, behaviors and decision-making that a moral person exhibits. They also explain the basis for perceiving the moral manager: role modeling through visible action, rewards and discipline, and communicating about ethics and values. The authors use this construct to explain how management is perceived as either ethical, unethical, hypocritical, or neutral and the ramifications of each perception.

This article could be the basis for not only learning what constitutes moral behavior and its importance, but how students can use ethical leadership to evaluate potential employers. If you would like a copy of this article, please contact me at .

__3.3 A-G Guide

Ever wonder how classes get UC A-G course approval? Ever want to have one of your courses accepted by UC (and/or CSU)? Learn everything you ever wanted to know at http://www.ucop.edu/a-gGuide.

The goal of this web site is to assist high school educators in designing innovative courses that meet both the University of California subject area requirements and conform to school curricular reform efforts. Specifically, the site provides a wealth of information about the "a-g requirements", including course descriptions of dozens of innovative courses that have been accepted by UC. It also provides assistance in understanding the UC course approval process and helpful insights as to why courses have or have not been approved.

__3.4 Content Knowledge

Many teachers intuitively know that providing a real world context will result in students developing the skills they need to be successful in life. However, we are in an environment of "accountability" that calls into question any program that does not result in improvements to the schoolís API. In this environment it is important to tie our curriculum to standards. A very useful resource is located at http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/. This site includes information for both content areas and performance skills. If you go to the Career Standards area, you can look at the business education standards.

Please share your innovative curriculum by contributing to this newsletter or by hosting a site visit so we can report on your work. If you are interested, contact us at or 408-938-1516.

You are reading the Web archive of the BaySCAN Financial Services Network mail list. Questions, comments, and submissions should be directed to:

Wesley Leung, Coordinator
BaySCAN
[email protected] (email)
408-938-1516 (phone)
408-271-7214 (fax)