Subject: Work Place Skills… The Foundation to Successful CTE
Presented by:
Paul Ruez, M.Ed.
Oceanside High School
Work Place Skills Advocate
http://ohs.oside.us/digitalstudio
Bio:
http://ohs.ousd.us/bio
Premise: With a solid introduction to the Decision Making Process, Goal Setting,
Conflict Resolution and Job Finding strategies and tactics, the CTE student has the
advantage as they learn and apply their specific career path skills. Lacking these four
key foundational components the job candidate or employee seeking career
advancement is climbing a career path ladder that is missing vital rungs. Employers’ are
seeking to hire people with these skills. Job candidates, who lack these skills, if
identified, are not hired. Employees who lack these skills are fired.
The Module begins on the first day of school and scaffolds throughout the school year
as students are presented with concepts and opportunities to apply them.
1. The Decision Making Process which I evolved from Stephen Covey’s writings
on the stimulus – response relationship. Here we take an everyday automatic
process and analyze it like playing a movie in freeze frame slow motion to give
the students the opportunity to understand that they have choices which lead to
the response or action relative to the stimulus.
2. The Goal Setting Process is introduced with multimedia sizzle from the Disney
remake of Alice in Wonderland. The students see Alice fight the Jabberwocky
and subtitles have been added to help the viewers connect the Jabberwocky with
the distractions they battle in their lives. Learning to recognize and choose to
manage one’s distractions is fundamental to remaining on a goal directed career
pathway.
3. The third cornerstone of this foundation is Conflict Resolution. Employers’ hire,
promote and retain workers who choose to get along. They fire or don’t hire
those who have not learned to resolve their differences in a civil manner.
Learning to recognize and deal non-violently with the needs behind action based
feelings is a vital component to resolving differences in a way that leads to
building bridges as opposed to walls. Bridges are conducive to a harmonious and
productive workplace, and employers’ understand that fostering this environment
increases profits. This piece of my Workplace Skills module is based on the work
of psychologist Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, educators Harry Wong and Fred Jones
and martial artist and educator Thomas Crum.
4. The fourth component is Job Finding. Examples of the Job Application, Cover
Letter and Resume are presented.
This is a lecture and interactive presentation.