ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
Hello and welcome back. I am your host, Barbara Scully with Connect FCS Ed. Today, I have an amazing colleague, Andrew Chamberlin is with me, and he is here to share his story.
Andrew started his career at Roosevelt High School in the Seattle Public Schools district. There he worked for 4 years teaching a variety of Family and Consumer Science courses. During that time, he also pursued his Masters in Curriculum and Instruction. Pursuing this degree allowed him to learn more about the process of designing curriculum, further strengthen his pedagogy, and promote problem-solving with real-world lessons. After his time at Roosevelt, Andrew moved on to securing a job teaching Family and Consumer Science classes at his alma mater, Bothell High School in the Northshore School District. This is where he currently is working teaching students the basic skills and confidence in working in a home-style kitchen with his Food & Nutrition course. Andrew also teaches a course called Independent Living, which allows students to learn personal finance, money management, employability skills, and the steps to living on their own. Both courses also emphasize leadership and how to best build these skills towards each student’s abilities and interests. Andrew teaches classes that are essential life skills for everyone.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT DISCUSSED…
• FCS Podcast: https://fcspodcast.com
• FCS Tips: https://www.fcstips.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConnectFCSed
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Scully6Files
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connectfcsed
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/connectfcsed
• Andrew Chamberlin: https://wafacse.org
KEYNOTES DISCUSSED:
• What I did is, the past president, now of the Washington affiliate group, we were invited to go speak with the student unit at one of their conferences about three years back, and really just to talk about what a FCS is and what the organization does and what a professional organization can do for you as a teacher or educator or professional in the field. And just kind of shed some more light on, Hey, there’s resources out there for you. (4:24)
• For me, personally, I think advocating is really important in the sense that if you don’t just share your ideas or beliefs, or even just share what resources are out there, it’s really hard for someone to just pick up and start doing it on their own. Because you don’t even know where to start at times, and so by advocating, it gives you that starting point for you to go, Oh, I can Google that, I can reach out more to that, or I can email someone and just ask, Hey, can you clarify something? So advocating, just spreading the word, that also gives a good point of contact for people to reach out and develop more relationships and foster more communication between everyone. (6:29)
• Now, I’m really fortunate, I work with the team, we have four family consumer science teachers that… That’s huge. Yes, it’s incredible. So in that sense, I’m really, really lucky. And other people in our district, some have two, some are one, so it just kind of depends on how we can communicate with each other, and we do our best to communicate with the other schools as well, so that way those teachers don’t feel totally lost, just fading into the background. (8:24)
• But each of us taught very different classes, so I was mainly foods focus, and we had a interior design, fashion merchandising teacher, we had an AP Psychology and Psychology teacher. So all of us, being that we’re family consumer science that worked, but at the same time, we all taught very different things. (9:36)
• So I guess the biggest tip I would have is, try and do as many professional developments as you can, or at least just attend a conference, whether it’s a summer conference or annual conference, try and do some sort of professional development with a family consumer science here in the state. By doing that, it can be really intimidating at first, but you get me and close to 30 other FCS educators or professionals here. And so, by having those connections already, it could be such a relief for a lot of people to know like, Oh, I’m not alone, I can go and talk to other people, or I can shoot them an email if I need something, or they can share their Google Docs. (16:46)
WHEN DOES IT AIR…
June 24, 2020