Most of you know that my 'day job' is teaching middle school. Home Ec, in fact. (Though it now has a new name -- Family and Consumer Sciences.) However, if I tell folks that I am a FACS teacher, they look confused. If I say Family and Consumer Sciences, they think I teach Science. If I say 'Home Ec', they all give me that 'A-ha!' look that teachers love to see and I know that they understand.
The next statement out of their mouths usually is something like, "I thought they did away with that years ago."
They did.
In many schools, the programs no longer exist. In fact, that is why so many of the 'new' teachers of career and tech ed are career switchers, like me. Once schools no longer taught these things, colleges and universities had no reason to produce teachers of these things. The colleges and universities which still have Family and Consumer Sciences are few and far between.
I am blessed that the school system where I teach sees and embraces the value of Career and Technical Education (aka CTE aka Home Ec (FACS), Shop (Technology Education), Business (Keyboarding, Marketing and more) and, in some schools, Ag (needs nothing parenthetical -- Agriculture is Agriculture). I love what I do and I love the school system where I do it. I don't know of any other school system that has such a strong CTE emphasis as ours.
What do turkeys and middle school boys have in common? Lots. The video below tells it all. Don't laugh at the awful turkey calling in this video. I was hoarse (after a week of teaching middle school) and I didn't have my turkey call outside. Plus, these little characters respond better to my raspy pseudo-turkey calls than they do to a real one. They think I'm their mama.
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