I apologize for any miscommunication on my part in the previous response. I feel my tone may have been misinterpreted.
My initial statement of failing to see much point in the other portions of a CTSO was rhetorical, but I did appreciate your response and insights. You explained way better than I can the real benefits of CTSOs when run by a great advisor, and I commend you on your successes.
I posed the follow up question on whether the competition was as secondary as you stated simply because if it was, then removing the competitive element should have little effect on the overall success of the program. We have an incredibly successful DECA program run by an amazing teacher (I wish I could build something a fraction as amazing as what he has), but I believe if students were told there wouldn't be state/national competitions anymore (ever), the numbers would drop drastically, potentially killing the program altogether. Though I could be wrong.
You're absolutely right. Leadership should be the focus (or at least one of several), and as a Skills USA advisor, I struggle developing it in my students. But I have 0 problems helping them see the value in competitions.
I apologize for my potentially poorly toned response before.
Original Message:
Sent: 10-21-2023 20:27
From: Ed Mondragon
Subject: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
I don't understand why you posed the question regarding the purpose of CTSOs if you only believe in the competitions. As a former coach, competition is very high in my personal characteristics, but I gave you broader reasons for CTSOs which you apparently weren't interested in hearing nor interested in teaching.
If you don't value the other components of CTSOs, then I suggest you stick to your VEX robotics team and leave the CTSOs to those with a desire to develop leadership within students.
I am sorry I provided insight into the overall purpose of CTSOs because it obviously wasn't something you were looking for. You can find competition information for any CTSO from their respective national website.
Ed Mondragon
Original Message:
Sent: 10/21/2023 2:38:00 PM
From: Judson Birkel
Subject: RE: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
As I said, that says more about me than about the actual value of CTSOs. I do question whether the competitive events is as secondary a purpose as you think. If it wasn't for the competitive events, would all the students still see a purpose in participating? If you asked your students "Why do you participate in SkillsUSA/FBLA/TSA", would they say for the leadership or for the service? Or would they say so they can improve their skills in the thing they're planning on competing in? What would they feel is the end goal of their involvement? The Leadership is our end goal for them, as advisors who see value in students learning leadership, but I'd argue that many students wouldn't see a reason to participate without the competitions... I could be completely wrong on that, but I don't think my existing students would participate without competition involvement.
I see other programs that have well developed CTSOs and am impressed by them and wish our program could grow to that, but I lack the knowhow, student interest, personal skillset, and school/district/state-level-SkillsUSA support. I'm not given any additional training or payment for my involvement with SkillsUSA, it's not a class I'm running, and I admittedly lack the leadership skills that would make me a good advisor for it. I wish I had the coaches mindset that made me more organized and better at driving students to a goal/purpose, but that's not my specialty and I lack the school/district support (and our State SkillsUSA support) to help build my SkillsUSA chapter into something better. One of the really hard things for my students is that when they're in my classroom they want to do something, and having a formal meeting to plan stuff isn't the "something" that they want to do. They want to write solutions to hard programming problems, they want to build a robot and prepare for competitions. We already participate in VEX robotics which meets many of the same checkboxes, but isn't considered one of the approved CTSOs, probably due to its focus on competitions and not on leadership, even though you can see the leadership with every team and program you visit.
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Judson Birkel
Salem OR
Original Message:
Sent: 10-20-2023 22:34
From: Ed Mondragon
Subject: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
As a former FBLA Chapter Advisor and currently as a District TSA Advisor, i can tell you that you miss the whole point of a CTSO. Each CTSO is a leadership program with community service as another important component, and the competitive events are an excellent way for CTE students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) but secondary.
I say this because I was a transformed sports coach (football, basketball, baseball) tasked with starting a FBLA chapter, so I ran the chapter from a business standpoint using my coaching talents to establish a structure to develop leadership skills. This worked exceptionally well and allowed me to position myself as an advisor (facilitator) rather than the leader of the chapter. I met with the officer team on a regular basis and advised them on deadlines and goals of the chapter, and that allowed me to shape these young individuals into leaders who then challenged their chapter to strive for excellence in their competitive events. In the ten years of running the FBLA chapter before transitioning into a CTE Coordinator/TSA District Advisor position, we had numerous state conference placers/champions and was fortunate enough to take 10+ students to the national conference for eight years with national placers every year and a national champion my last year as the chapter advisor.
Leadership is the way through which I was able to develop a strong FBLA chapter that is still doing well at the state and national levels, all resultant of the leadership I was able to establish so the students became the chapter leaders.
This is how I worked it, but leadership is the ultimate goal of all CTSOs with the competitive events as a wonderful celebration of student initiative and drive.
Ed Mondragon
Original Message:
Sent: 10/20/2023 2:46:00 PM
From: Judson Birkel
Subject: RE: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
The competitions are the only reason I want to participate in SkillsUSA. I don't see a lot of value in any of the other components of CTSOs - but that may say more about my personality and lack of organizational skills than the actual value of the organizations.
TSA = Technical Student Association. It's comparable to Skills USA in that it offers a range of competition options for students (along with being a student organization focused on technical skills and service), but with a much heavier emphasis on computers. Many of the competitive events require some use of computers to either complete the task, model behavior, or create a presentation. Their list of competitions contains 40 different options, but whether those are available in your state depends on the current size of TSA in your State. In Oregon we're barely getting started and only going to run a couple of the competitive events @ state.
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Judson Birkel
Salem OR
Original Message:
Sent: 10-19-2023 11:40
From: Brian Bautista
Subject: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
This was my experience with SkillsUSA.
I don't love the focus on the competition side to be honest, but the actual competitions were very opaque in Broadcasting.
What is TSA? I am unfamiliar with it.
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BrianBautistabbautista@rjuhsd.usCA
Original Message:
Sent: 10-19-2023 11:36
From: Judson Birkel
Subject: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
I'm currently in SkillsUSA and checking out TSA. I've been unhappy with them. As a CTE program, I know I have to have a CTSO, but I struggle getting students interested and the organization's state leadership has not been good at communicating and responding to emails. I have more students participating in VEX Robotics than SkillsUSA, but sadly VEX is not currently designated as an approved CTSO.
For Skills USA, we meet irregularly (every few weeks as needed, starting in December) and prepare for the State competition. I've not participated in the Game Development competition, just the web competition so far (This is our 2nd year participating). My biggest issue with SkillsUSA's competition structure is that I don't feel they adequately inform students on what the competition tests students on. For Web Design, our students knew HTML & CSS, but we had no idea whether they also needed to know about servers, javascript, DOM, Databases, PHP, etc. Many of the competition Prep documentations (forgetting what they're actually called) are so vague that it leaves students unsure as to whether or not they're prepared to participate and there's no example problems from past years to help students practice before arriving. I had a few students drop out of SkillsUSA weeks before the state competition because they had no idea if they were ready for it. It's one thing to be unsure if your skill level will be as good as others, it's another to be unsure of whether your knowledge base is even at a base level for the competition.
As Amy said, though, the game development competition is actually provided in advance and students come to the competition to present their game rather than to code/develop a game on the spot.
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Judson Birkel
Salem OR
Original Message:
Sent: 10-18-2023 17:32
From: Amy Harris
Subject: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
We are currently in SkillsUSA. We did TSA in the past, but weren't satisfied with it. For Skills, the Video Game competition is actually for apps or games, and it's an original design prepared in advance (or that's what it was - I haven't done that contest this year or last year because I didn't have students interested). They have some documentation that goes along with it, and they have an interview.
There's also a 3D modeling contest that is done onsite. We used Blender to compete in that, but IIRC, it was software agnostic. They were given project specs and a time limit.
Both contests were open to teams of two, I think. The kids had fun.
Beyond the contests, our school chapter does fundraisers and activities. Student interest has fallen off overall over the years, unfortunately.
For those who don't know what a CTSO is, it's a Career and Technical Student Organization, and is a requirement for Perkins-funded CTE programs.
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Amy Harris
CTE Computer Science / Esports
MO
Original Message:
Sent: 10-18-2023 11:16
From: Brian Bautista
Subject: Wednesday Check in - CTSOs
Is you program a part of a CTSO (Career and Technical Student Organization)?
If so which one? What do you do as part of it?
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BrianBautistabbautista@rjuhsd.usCA
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