The new school year is almost here, and Alabama’s teachers are already working hard to make it one of the best yet. This week, the Alabama Department of Education and the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development, are offering cooperative education teachers and career and technical education (CTE) administrators statewide, an opportunity to participate in a special one-day professional development workshop, the Alabama Career Readiness Certificate (CRC) and KeyTrain Software Training, on July 23.
This workshop will be held from 8:30 a.m. until noon, and will take place at nine different ACCESS Distance Learning sites statewide. All instruction for this workshop will be delivered using Interactive Video Conferencing and real-time computer training. Members of the media are invited to attend.
The primary goal of this event is to further develop the skills of Alabama’s teachers in preparing students for their future careers and tomorrow’s highly competitive workforce. Participating teachers will receive information on how their students can earn the Alabama Career Readiness Certificate (CRC), and also get a free copy of KeyTrain – a Web-based software program that educators nationwide are using to help students build lifelong employability and career skills.
The ACCESS Distance Learning sites that will host this event are:
· Lawrence County High School – Moulton
· Loachapoka High School – Loachapoka
· Madison County Computer Services Lab – Huntsville
· Kate D. Smith DAR High School – Grant
· Mobile County Board of Education – Mobile
· Hewitt-Trussville High School – Trussville
· Central High School – Tuscaloosa
· Pike County High School – Brundidge
· Spain Park High School – Hoover
Additional Information:
· The CRC is nationally recognized. To earn this certificate, students or jobseekers must take three employability assessments- applied math, reading for information, and locating information. These three assessments test the exact skills required for over 85 percent of all careers available today.
· The level of CRC (bronze, silver, or gold) that a person obtains is determined by their overall performance on a WorkKeys assessment. WorkKeys is a job-skills evaluation that is used to measure the overall skills that a jobseeker has – the skills that employers are looking for and believe are the most critical to job success. Examples are teamwork, reading, writing, and reasoning skills.
· KeyTrain is a guide designed specifically to help students with WorkKeys job skills. It has more than 20,000 pages of interactive materials covering all WorkKeys skill sets.
· The KeyTrain software is being offered free-of-charge to every school participating in the workshop. Most of these schools offer work-based learning classes, co-op, or Jobs for Alabama’s Graduates (JAG) programs.
· More than 170 free software licenses are expected to be issued. This will be the largest number of free KeyTrain software licenses provided to teachers in the nation.
To learn more about this special event for Alabama’s educators, contact Gerry Moses, Education Specialist, at 334-242-9109 or gmoses@alsde.edu.