That Should "Cover" It: KTC Students Create their Cover Letters

This week at KTC, the students are finishing their drafts of their thank you letters to their mock interviewers, they are taking a pre-test on cover letters, we will discuss and show what a thank you letter looks like as well as the requirements, have them take a post-test, and then start on their rough draft of the cover letter.

On the Moodle page, there is a pre-test that asks about whom the letter should be addressed to, what things you should mention, and how you should close your cover letter.

The students also will have a template (gotten from the MS Word templates) that they could use to help them complete the assignment.  The students are to have their rough draft to me by the end of the day by sharing it with me through Google.

At KTC, we want our students to leave our school being work ready.  I myself want to make sure that these students know how to create these documents, that they can make them on their own, but also give them the chance to make these documents on their own and provide feedback or a chance for revision if needed.

Giving Thanks: KTC Students Compose Thank You's

This week at KTC, students are beginning their rough drafts of their thank you letters to their interviewers.

All of the students are writing the thank you letters in Google Drive so that way they can share them with me or their teachers.  We briefly recapped the parts of a thank you letter with a template projected onto my white board with the help of the ELMO.  After that, I kept the template up and the students used it as a guide for how to do their thank you letter.  When they are done, they are to share it with me.

The main goal of today is for them to get a start on this thank you letter.  Next week, they will have comments on their document they shared with me so they can revise it.   Our goal at KTC is that when a resume, cover letter, or thank you letter leaves this building, it is employment ready.


They will also be starting on cover letters next week.  It should be polished and should hold to the conventions of English and to the high standard we have established at KTC.  This includes a pre-test, video for viewing, a picture to look at, discussion, rubric for grading, and a post-test.

The Rapid is Coming: Rapid Bus Training Set to Happen at KTC

The Rapid will be coming to KTC the week of March 28th to do both a presentation and interactive demonstrations about how to "Ride the Rapid" city bus system.

Many of our students at KTC do not know how to use public transit, also known as the city bus system.  This could be because they live outside of the city, they already have a bus transporting them to KTC, but also because they do not feel equipped or do not understand the system and are afraid of the experience.


The Rapid provides bus training to those who would like to learn how to use the city bus system.  The Rapid will come to your home and teach you how to ride the bus to your destination if you need to. All you have to do is go to https://www.ridetherapid.org/howtoride/travel-training or call the Travel Training office at 616-456-7514. 

A Living Document: KTC Uses Google Docs to Allow Staff and Students to Revise Papers

At KTC, we are using Google Docs as our platform for making, editing, and sharing documents.  The students at KTC have used Google Docs for their resumes, thank you letters (current assignment), and will soon for their cover letter.

On Google Docs, they will make their document, share it with me, I make comments or may tell them how to reword something, and then the students can go in and make the changes.




We opted for this after many students said they couldn't get their work done because it was in their file on our servers on campus or after they said that Microsoft Word didn't save their changes for them on their document.


Google Docs make it easy for them to type and make their changes.  We also love the fact that if a student can find internet, they can find their document and be able to work on it.





Please, encourage your student to work on their documents from home or anywhere they can access them.  These are graded assignments and we want them to do their best, which usually means that they made need more time than what they get while in their classes at KTC.  Thank you!

Let's Blog About It!: KTC uses blogs to communicate messages to the world and as a forum for discussion between teachers and students

At KTC this year, we are incorporating blogging into our classroom teaching and activities for students.  Some teachers are using Blogger, a free online blogging platform with out Google accounts, and Ryan Marklevitz (Hospitality instructor) is using KidBlog.

Randy Gebolys (Facilities Maintenance), Beth Mazur (Early Childcare Careers), Renee LaFurgey (Retail), and Clayton Powell (Automotive) are all using Blogger.  Clayton Powell and Randy Gebolys put questions on their blog for the students to answer and also require them to respond to another classmate's blog posting as well.

I have experience with Blogger through my Grand Valley State University Educational Technology degree experiences but I am truly excited that our students are using technology that allows them to communicate with each other, with others around the world, and in ways that college students are being instructed.

The students are beginning their online presence, we are getting the word out about KTC, and we're doing it in innovative ways.

At the Kent Transition Center, we lead learning.

Becoming Independent: KTC Students Use Assistive Technology to Break Down Barriers to their Learning

At KTC, many of our students come in with some sort of deficit.  The deficit that makes it hard for most kids to participate in my class is the lack of reading ability or reading skills and the the lack of fine motor skills or writing ability.

In traditional classrooms, these students need the help of someone who would read for this student. In my class, we are using technology to help the students overcome these obstacles by using text to speech and voice to text options on the computer.

Both of these functions are available with Google.  Google offers the Chrome Web Store which provides you with the ability to download numerous tools to help your students.  The one extension we downloaded was called SpeakIt! and will allow students to highlight text in a website (including Moodle) and have it read to them.  After it is downloaded to the student's Google account, it shows up in the far right corner of their web address bar.

Something else that is extremely useful for our students is the voice to text option that is now free with any Google account.  In a Google Doc, under tools, you will find the option of voice typing.  With this feature, you can click to use your microphone on your computer, speak into your computer, and the words you're saying appear on the screen.

Using Google has definitely helped my teaching and has helped my students both learn and become independent.

Ticket to Ride: Mrs. R provides incentives for participation

My name used to be Ms. Weber but since then, I have gotten married and now many students can't pronounce my name.  Many of my students just call me Mrs. R or Mrs. Raj.  In my ELA class at KTC, my class is the one that students tend to like the least.  They would rather be in their classes learning what they came to KTC for and don't understand why they have to learn English.

My class is not your typical English class.  While at their home schools may be reading books and doing reports, in my class they are speaking out loud, phrasing responses for interviews, reading through job postings, and other career oriented activities.

Headphones, candy, and multi-port USBs are some of the prizes raffled off so far.

I know that it is hard to keep their enthusiasm and focus for the hour they have my class so I offer incentives for participating in my class.  For every time a student responds, provides input/feedback, or asks a question related to the topic we are learning about, I give them a ticket which is then put into a raffle for something desirable.  This way, I hope to keep their focus on classwork and the subject area as opposed to something else.

Giving Thanks: KTC students review their interview progress, continue working on their interview responses, and learn the parts of a thank you letter

KTC students just underwent interviews last week with volunteers from the Kent ISD educational services center (ESC), Kent School Services Network (KSSN), Kent Career Technical Center (KCTC), KTC, and D&W Fresh Market.  The students had a great time and really impressed our interviewers.

This week, we hand back their grading sheets so that the students can look them over and see what they did well and what they can improve on.  The students were also told about the comments on the back of the sheets as well from the interviewers to them.  The students thought it was very nice that someone took their time to write specific things for all of our students.

Next, we tried to think about pinpointing what we could mention as a weakness for ourselves and a way we could overcome that obstacle or deal with the problem.  The students thought of 3 weaknesses and 3 solutions and wrote them down on a sheet for both myself and their content area teachers (Early Childhood Careers, Automotive, etc) could see.  We have been using the strategy that if you mention a weakness, that you need to add a positive to it such as a strategy for overcoming, dealing with, or improving that weakness.

Lastly, the students had taken a pre-test on the parts of a thank you letter, now they would be diagramming it out, labeling the parts, and using those notes to compose a thank you letter for their interviewers next week and help them ace their post-tests.

Leaving a Lasting Impression: Mock Interviews at the Kent Transition Center

This week at the Kent Transition Center, we had the students undergo a mock interview with someone they didn't know.  We had talked about interviewing in class since the end of the second quarter, but this was to be their pre-test to see what their scores would be with minimal to any coaching.  

2015-2016 Mock Interview Scoring Rubric

Most students on week 8 of the second quarter were shown the rubric that they would be graded by where as others were not due to exams and our school-wide field trip to the Michigan Career Technical Institute.  The students were very nervous and most hoped to do really well in their first practice interview here at KTC.

The rubric morphed this year thanks to some insight from someone who volunteered at KIH, our neighbor across the street, in their mock interviews for their students.  The new rubric judges the students more on their body language,
which has been proven through survey after survey, can fail someone's interview before they even answer the question of "tell me about yourself."  

Non-verbal mistakes made a job interviews (from a survey of 2000 bosses)

The students in week 3 of this quarter will be looking over this rubric and beginning to learn the basics of a thank you letter so that in week 6, they will be constructing one for their interviewers.  

On behalf of the students, who are in the process of beginning to compose their thank you letter, I would like to thank our interviewers for their time and their efforts.  It is by the cooperation of people like you, that we continue to help our students learn how to be successful adults and employable citizens.  Thank you so much for your time and we hope to call upon you in the near future.  

Our next round of interviews will be the week of April 18th-April 22nd, 2016.

Thank you to our first-round interviewers listed below: 

Kailey Specht
Glennda Parker
Marla Salmon
Kay Pugh
Craig Steenstra
Carol Paine-McGovern (KSSN)
Brenda Brower
Eric Kelliher
Kurt Helferich
Phil Winslow (D&W)
Robin Loughrin
Lindsay Tilley
Shay Kraley
Meghan Aupperlee
Dena Harris

Being "Resourceful": KTC Students Search for Websites, Videos, and More About How-To and How-To-Not Interview

This week at KTC, while the other students were going out for their interviews, the students were going onto the worldwide web and finding resources (websites, videos, and pictures) about interviewing.  They were researching what to and what not to wear, how to answer and how not to answer, and so many more connected to interviewing.  There were so many good resources found.  It was truly amazing.

I had created a Google Doc and shared it with all the students.  I asked the students to add their name and their resources to the document including the URL/web address and the picture if they could.  It was great to see the students using technology.  Many of them are now able to add another row to a table, know what a URL/web address is, how to copy and paste with command keys, and how to collaborate with each other online.  It was truly amazing and very exciting.