Kinston High School automotive instructor Holland Pace wheels his laptop into place so students who’ve joined the class on Zoom can watch classmates in the shop complete an oil change. In CTE classes, where a premium is normally put on hands-on learning, teachers have changed their presentation methods but not their curriculum or expectations. Submitted photo.

Automotive instructor Holland Pace spends some class time holding mechanic’s tools up to a laptop’s camera. Stephanie Sumner, in teaching food preparation, shops for and packages “lab kits” of ingredients so students can cook at home. Kim Hipkiss is preparing 10 seniors for certification as nurse aides in ways she’s never done in her 24 years of teaching.

With hands-on learning at the heart of a curriculum designed to teach real work and life skills, CTE teachers with Lenoir County Public Schools are relying on technology and outside-the-box techniques to bridge the distance imposed by virtual instruction. There’s been a learning curve for all concerned, the teachers say.

“This is considerably harder,” said Pace, in his second year leading automotive classes at Kinston High School. “You feel like you’re not doing enough for the kids who are 100 percent remote or even the kids who are not coming every day because they’re hybrid.”

What Pace and his CTE colleagues are doing is this: bringing remote students into the classroom and lab via Zoom, posting assignments digitally, augmenting live instruction with pre-recorded lessons and being adaptive in teaching skills.

About half of LCPS’s high school students are enrolled in at least one class in the Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, and students who focus on the CTE curriculum can earn certifications and college credits that give them a head start on an associate degree or a full-time job. Despite the disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic – and its impact on classes normally geared to practical arts like turning wrenches or laying brick or bathing an invalid patient – CTE’s potential for moving students ahead hasn’t changed.

“We’re still covering our normal curriculum both online and out in the classroom,” Pace said. “When I get out into the shop area, I’ve got my kids that are in class and I drag my computer around with me and move it around as best I can to let the kids at home see what’s going on.”

On a recent day in his first-period Automotive I class, a half-dozen students in the shop followed Pace’s instructions for changing the oil in the pickup suspended above them on a lift while other members of the class followed along on Zoom. With his laptop on a cart, Pace wheeled it within range of students working under the lift or, later, under the hood and occasionally gave the remote students a close-up view of the tools being used.

In a normal school year, his students would probably spent 70 percent of their time in the shop and 30 percent in the classroom, he estimated; this year, that ratio has flipped and Pace is focused more on teaching students, whether on the hybrid or fully remote schedule, what they need to know to earn ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certification.

“There’s a certain amount of theory we need to teach,” he said.

For fully remote students, the hands-on “tinkering,” as Pace puts it, is optional; and since it would probably involve the family car, it’s not encouraged without adult supervision at home.

Cooking ‘lab kits’
In that regard, South Lenoir High food science teacher Stephanie Sumner has it a little easier. Students might not have a car to practice on outside of school, but they likely have an oven. On the other hand, they may not have the milk they need to complete a recipe at home. 

Sumner considers that possibility when she shops for and assembles “lab kits” of ingredients that keep her fully remote Foods I students engaged in the practical part of her class. A recent hands-on exercise utilizing the lab kits put into practice lessons about measurement, leavening and other basics of baking. Students could choose between a Red Velvet Soda Cake with Jell-O Icing or Pumpkin Puree Cookies.

“The kids who grabbed that Red Velvet bag knew they would need to buy either milk or Cool Whip. If they chose the cookies, they wouldn’t need anything else,” Sumner said. “I’ve given them the opportunity if they don’t have the resources to go to the store to buy ingredients or don’t have milk.”

On Tuesday, Sumner and her counterparts at Kinston and North Lenoir high schools grouped their students virtually for guest demonstrations by Jeff Yourdon, who leads the culinary arts program at Lenoir Community College. In addition to showing some fancy knife skills, Yourdon covered subjects suggested by the high school teachers, from calibrating thermometers to global cuisines.

Sumner’s introductory class teaches the rudiments of cooking, food safety, nutrition and etiquette. Her Foods II class gets seriously into careers, business management and food safety and prepares students for ServSafe certification, an advantage for potential employees. In fact, all her Foods II students have completed ServSafe coursework and are waiting to take the in-person test, delayed because of restrictions on gatherings.

The irony of classes that have always emphasized safety and cleanliness now being upended by safety considerations related to the pandemic isn’t lost on Sumner. “We were already cautious but now it’s just different because there not nearly as many people in the classroom and you’re still trying to bring in that group element so they can get those real-life skills they’re going to need,” she said

Expectations unchanged
Kim Hipkiss, the veteran health science teacher at North Lenoir High, secured a waiver from the State Board of Nursing to allow her students to do just that – work in groups to practice real-life skills. 

But to get her students the 40 hours of lab work required for nurse aide certification, Hipkiss has had to adapt to the fact that she doesn’t have her students together daily for a sustained period of time.

“I’m having to focus more on the skills to get their lab hours in and they’re having to learn more online rather than in person as far as coursework,” she said. “I’ve had to learn a whole lot of technology really quickly. For me, at my age and my training, that has been a really big challenge.”

In a normal year, her nursing students would get clinical experience at UNC Lenoir Health Care or Spring Arbor assisted living facility. This year, they have permission from the State Board of Nursing to get that practice in a “scenario-driven lab situation,” Hipkiss said. “They’ve been acting like the mannequins are their patients.”

In a school year that demands flexibility from teachers and students alike, bathing a mannequin is just one more thing. “My curriculum has not changed, the academics have remained the same, the expectations are the same, but the presentation is very different,” Hipkiss said.

And the success rate?

Of the 10 seniors studying for nurse aide certification, 10 are on track to earn it. “I tell them if they do what I tell them to do, they’re very likely to get it,” Hipkiss said. “They will be getting that this semester.”