With Love from Your FACS or Home Economics or Whatever You want to Call me Teacher: A FACS reflection featuring the Minnesota Family and Consumer Sciences Conference.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

A FACS reflection featuring the Minnesota Family and Consumer Sciences Conference.

It was good to see my FACS/FCS friends at the Minnesota Association of Family and Consumer Sciences Conference. The theme, Bridging the Gap, centering our focus.

This information is in regard to our conference but much of it is important for anyone in the field of FACS/FCS.

Minnesota has just completed their "Frameworks". It is called "Frameworks" because FACS/FCS is an elective in Minnesota and the content should be left to the district. Therefor we can not call them standards. But, they are similar and a good "Frame" for educators to follow.

Dr. Jill Conlon, Karen Smith and Debbie Larson have spent countless hours meeting with FACS/FCS educators around the state assembling for each of our content areas. While doing so they lobbied for a FACS/FCS Specialist. We thank them and the many others that have lobbied for this position over the last 12 years for the success of re-instating this position.

Maxine Peterson was hired in August.

Max, Debbie and Jill spoke at the conference.

Jill and Debbie spoke about the "Frameworks" and the items that they focused while building the content. They spoke of how the "Frameworks" refer to our National FACS/FCS standards, they said that it is a living document and that it is to be used as a reference in your school's program. It also refers to STEM, Career Pathways and Math focused areas.

It discusses FACS/FCS as Career and Technical Education, Traditional Programs, Critical Science (addressing issues in society and traditional Science).

Maxine reminded us that a flash drive of the document is available through the Minnesota Department of Education. She talked about STEM in relation to FACS/FCS and the career wheel. She also reminded us that tuition reimbursement is available for FACS/FCS educators because there is a shortage of teachers. (Through Perkins, Stafford, and Teach grants).

Minnesota has a Childhood Education Career day in 2016.

She talked about the teacher Cadet training for educators to recruit FACS/FCS educators in your classroom. http://teachercadets.com/

Lastly she reminded us about the importance of Advisory Boards in your school district and the component of leadership in your program. (FCCLA is one way to get that leadership component)

Dr. Carolyn Barnhart, AAFCS president, spoke to us about the AAFCS and the programs currently being featured through AAFCS. Say Yes to FCS and Dine In and the coalition recently formed among FACS/FCS related organizations. There are 4004 members in the Association, if you are not a member please consider joining.

I was given the opportunity to speak in an educational session about my advocacy of FACS/FCS through my blogging and how to use ETSY. It was great fun and I thank those that attended the workshop and hope that you gained a bit of knowledge about those items. FUN group.

A link to my ETSY account/shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmilHansDesigns?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Thanks to Lois Lewis and her team for her countless work in organizing the conference. It was a great venue and well planned out.

With love from your retired FACS/FCS teacher,
Jane