Adapting to Conditions
If you're on a screen or from behind a visor and mask, it's hard to learn to cut or color hair, make a standing rib roast or repair an engine remotely.
But career and technical school students have had to adapt to the COVID-19 conditions and restrictions.
For students at Linda McCarren's Butler Beauty School, 233 S. Main St., it means pursuing their cosmetology or esthetician license encumbered with added equipment.
“We have to do everything,” said McCarren, the third-generation owner of the school. “Masks, shields, rubber gloves, sanitation lights, disinfectants: we've had to use all of that.”
Social distancing is very important, she said.
“Students and clients are kept apart,” McCarren said. “I'm just following CDC guidelines.”Clients of the school have to make an appointment now to have the school's students work on their hair, nails or skin.McCarren said she has 21 students in her current class, down a bit from her usual class size. She attributes the decrease to worries about COVID-19.Pandemic worries and precautions are something technical centers and their students and teachers are having to adapt to across the state, according to Dr. Kirk Williard, the president of the Pennsylvania Association of Career and Technical Administrators.The PACTA is a statewide group made up of directors of 84 technical centers and another group of high schools that have career technical centers.“Career technical centers” is the preferred term, rather than vo-tech schools, he said.
“The biggest thing career centers have done in the midst of the pandemic is to understand how to integrate technology into the learning environment,” Williard said.“It's trying to get away from the vo-tech of yesteryear,” said Williard, by using more remote learning methods such as Zoom and remote classes.He said this process was going on in the state's technical centers even before the pandemic, but the reaction to COVID-19 has accelerated the process.There has been a greater integration of technology and its function into all forms of career technical center programs, ranging from culinary arts to engine repair.Williard said center directors have been reaching out to their business and industry connections to learn how the current workforce is responding to the changes brought about by the pandemic.
“Students will understand what the workforce is like, and what they will be preparing for,” Williard said.“I don't think we anticipate getting away from this integration of technology,” Williard said. “Being forward-thinking might change from the shop approach to the lab approach.”He said it doesn't take away the experience of hands-on learning.Williard said most schools are using some form of hybrid instruction where students attend classes every other day and have remote schooling the rest of the time.But students still need to touch equipment and have practical lessons.Williard said, for example, with culinary students “centers are putting packages together to get out to the households, and students are able to do the culinary activities that they are expected to do.”
McCarren said her students still have to put in the requisite hours: 1,250 to be a cosmetologist (hair) and 300 hours to be an esthetician (skin) or nail technician.Upon graduation, her students receive their state licenses. Some come back to complete another 625 hours to become qualified teachers themselves.“I just think current students have responded to the integration of hands-on learning to, quickly, hands-on technology, and the virtual learning that goes with it,” Williard said.“Their enthusiasm for their fields hasn't changed,” he said. “They've simply learned how to integrate technology into their field of study.”The integration of technology into the career technical curriculum in the post-pandemic future will continue, he said.
