SkillsUSA for the AVTF Teacher: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Started

Ask an AVTF teacher why they aren’t involved with SkillsUSA and you’re likely to hear some familiar concerns.

How much is this going to cost? How do I raise the money? How much time will this take? What competitions make sense for my students? How do I get everyone—and all their equipment—to the right place at the right time?

Is it worth it?

And perhaps the biggest question:

We asked experienced AVTF teachers and SkillsUSA advisors to tell us what they wish someone had told them before they started.

Their answers didn’t make SkillsUSA sound easy.

They did, however, make a pretty convincing case that it’s worth the effort.

You Don’t Have to Build a Huge Chapter

When Caleb Bailey, Audio-Video Technology & Film (AVTF) Instructor and SkillsUSA Advisor at Long County High School in Ludowici, Georgia, first became involved with SkillsUSA four years ago, he admits he didn’t really know what he was getting into.

“I had NO CLUE what it was,” Bailey said.

One of his early mistakes was believing that he needed to make his program as large and successful as possible from the beginning. He eventually realized that trying to keep up with much larger SkillsUSA chapters wasn’t necessarily the best thing for his students—or himself.

“Quality over quantity is DEFINITELY something I take seriously,” Bailey said. “I’d much rather have a chapter of 30 GOOD kids that work hard and do what we ask than 100 kids who just don’t care.”

That’s particularly important for a teacher who may be the school’s only SkillsUSA advisor.

At a state conference, you may encounter chapters with 100 or 150 students. Bailey cautions new advisors against using those programs as their measuring stick. Some schools have multiple advisors, multiple CTAE pathways feeding their chapter, or SkillsUSA as their primary CTSO.

His advice is simpler:

Do what your chapter and school can do—and do it well.

Yes, It Can Get Expensive

Both Bailey, and New York Video Production teacher and SkillsUSA advisor Cory Nedell identified cost as one of the realities teachers need to understand before jumping in.

For Bailey, teaching in a rural Title I school means many families simply cannot absorb registration, travel and hotel expenses.

Fundraising, therefore, isn’t optional. It’s part of running the chapter.

Bailey recommends looking for fundraisers with little or no overhead and not overlooking community members and businesses willing to support students.

Nedell’s program faces similar challenges.

His district covers some transportation expenses and much of the cost when students advance to nationals, but the program fundraises for most other SkillsUSA expenses.

That can create some uncomfortable conversations.

Nedell recalled having students who raised almost nothing ask why they couldn’t attend a state competition costing approximately $500 per student.

The good news, according to both advisors, is that there are plenty of fundraising opportunities available. Individual community members and businesses may also be willing to sponsor students.

The lesson for a new advisor may be this: Don’t wait until conference registration opens to start thinking about money.

Fundraising needs to be part of the SkillsUSA plan from the beginning of the school year.

The Logistics Are Real

Then there’s the part nobody puts on the recruitment poster.

Buses.

Hotels.

Permission forms.

Competition schedules.

Chaperones.

Equipment.

Registration.

And making sure dozens of teenagers somehow end up where they’re supposed to be, when they’re supposed to be there, carrying what they’re supposed to have.

For Nedell, securing transportation for New York’s April competition may mean reserving a bus during the first few weeks of September.

“The logistics are often very overwhelming,” he said.

His chapter has divided responsibilities between two advisors. Nedell handles competition logistics while his co-advisor oversees fundraising.

And even experienced advisors make mistakes.

Nedell remembers forgetting to distribute safety forms to an entire busload of 30 students.

Bailey faces a different logistical challenge. His school is approximately four and a half hours from Georgia’s state conference in Atlanta. When a competition was scheduled for 10 a.m., Bailey decided an additional hotel night—and the additional expense—was preferable to putting students on a bus at three or four in the morning.

He also recommends considering more chaperones than the minimum requirement, particularly at a large state conference.

These aren’t reasons not to participate.

They’re reasons to plan earlier than you think you need to.

Let Students Help Carry the Load

Bailey learned another important lesson after his first year:

SkillsUSA shouldn’t consume the advisor’s life.

One of the best ways he’s found to prevent that is identifying dependable student leaders.

“Finding a good group of students that you can trust to be your leaders is key to making your life easier,” Bailey said.

That’s more than delegation.

Students taking responsibility for their chapter are practicing exactly the leadership, communication, organization and employability skills that CTSOs are designed to develop.

In other words, the teacher doesn’t necessarily need to do everything.

And probably shouldn’t.

SkillsUSA Can Become Part of Your Curriculum

One concern video teachers may have is finding room for SkillsUSA alongside everything else they’re already expected to teach.

Bailey argues that teachers may be looking at that backward.

SkillsUSA’s framework aligns naturally with the employability skills already embedded in CTAE programs.

In his beginning AVTF classes, Bailey created “Framework Friday,” using one lesson each week to address one of the SkillsUSA Framework’s 17 Essential Elements.

That helps him address employability standards while simultaneously introducing students to SkillsUSA.

Instead of becoming another item competing for instructional time, SkillsUSA can help provide a structure for something teachers are already supposed to be teaching.

Competition Changes Students

This is where both teachers’ responses changed.

Ask them about fundraising and you hear about challenges.

Ask about logistics and you hear about headaches.

Ask why they keep doing it and suddenly you’re hearing about their students.

Nedell’s program has earned more than 20 SkillsUSA awards at the regional, state and national levels, including first place nationally in Video Production.

But the medals aren’t what he talks about first.

It’s what happens during competition.

“Seeing your students, more focused than they usually ever are in class, working their tails off trying their best to make something they’re proud of is truly amazing,” Nedell said.

Then they finish.

Some literally run up to him excited to show him what they’ve accomplished.

Most leave proud of what they created. When they don’t, Nedell sees another opportunity—a valuable lesson about preparation, competition, disappointment and improvement.

Bailey has witnessed a similar transformation.

He has watched students go from “shy and scared freshmen” to “blossoming student professionals” capable of interacting with students and professionals outside their own school.

That’s difficult to reproduce inside a classroom.

Iron Sharpens Iron—and Not Just for Students

Nedell raises another benefit that might be easy to overlook.

Your students get to see what everyone else is doing.

AVTF students spend much of their time surrounded by classmates who use the same equipment, learned from the same teacher and work within the same production culture.

Competition changes their reference point.

Suddenly they’re watching students from other schools solve the same production problems differently.

As Nedell puts it, “iron sharpens iron.”

But he says that applies to teachers, too.

Advisors see other programs’ work. They meet teachers facing similar challenges. They discover new approaches and sometimes realize their own program needs to change.

Nedell believes that experience contributed directly to his program’s remarkable improvement.

One year, they finished eighth in New York.

The next year, they finished first in the nation.

“We saw what other programs were doing and realized we needed to step it up and change things in a big way,” he said.

So…Is It Worth It?

Neither Bailey nor Nedell describes SkillsUSA as easy.

You’ll probably fundraise.

You’ll fill out forms.

You’ll chase down students.

You’ll worry about buses, hotels, equipment and schedules.

You might even discover that the safety forms for 30 students are still sitting in your bag.

But you’ll also watch students take their work more seriously than you’ve ever seen them take a classroom assignment.

You’ll watch them meet students who share their interests.

You’ll see them discover that they’re better than they thought—or discover how much better they could become.

You may even come home with new ideas that change your own AVTF program.

Nedell summarizes the calculation rather succinctly:

“The benefits FAR, FAR, FAR outweigh the cons.”

Perhaps that’s the thing someone should tell a new AVTF SkillsUSA advisor before they start.

It’s going to be work.

But it just might be worth it.

Are you an AVTF teacher or SkillsUSA advisor? What do you wish someone had told you before you got involved? StreamSemester would like to hear about your experiences—especially the mistakes, surprises and lessons that could help another teacher get started.